i, i keep a record of the wreckage in my life
the other day h pointed out that i’ve listened to taylor swift the most on spotify, and by that ranking, it seems i like her more than billie eilish. but taylor is not my favorite, i don’t think.
i actually started listening to billie after she swept the grammys. it was a real “bonny bear” moment for me. who the fuck is billie eilish? i found “bad guy” ft. justin bieber catchy, but mainly for his verses. the breakdown bored me. i found the rest of her record uninteresting, not bad guy enough. i don’t know how i crossed over into finding the deep twinkly snarly beauty of it, actually.
when i got a new job and started to commute into an office, just before the pandemic, it was 20 minutes on a good day, half an hour to 45 minutes otherwise; even longer if i got stuck behind a train. so, every day, i’d queue up an album. WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? was almost perfectly the length of my commute. it was winter. the morning was dark, and the evening was dark. i left the house with a thermos of coffee, yawning, eyes half-closed. it was the soundtrack to the streams of traffic, the blinking lights. it created this weird magical environment that made the boredom bearable. this hushed space and thick bass menace. it’s the wild spree that taylor wants to have in reputation, but she is a sequined black dress with gilded snake rings; billie is the abyss, the neon monster. step on the glass, staple your tongue. she sings about suicide. her heartbreak is not small towns or film screens, but the craggy landscape of depression, the overwhelming gulf of anxiety.
soon, i started watching videos of billie, and one in particular about recording in the studio with her producer. when i mentioned it to justin, he said immediately: “you mean billie and her brother, finneas?” almost like “billie andherbrotherfinneas?” 💀
how little i knew about them, then, and though unsurprising because of his encyclopedic knowledge of many things, how striking it was that he knew who they were and how tightly they worked together, despite not really listening to them.
i think “happier than ever” is now my favorite song of hers. it starts out as a fifties-ish crooning soft velvet crackly vinyl piece, then slips into a banger with hard, crunchy guitar. there is so much emotion compressed into her lines, smooth and delicate at first, then: raw, brutal, seething, screaming. you ruined everything good. always said you were misunderstood. a fuck-you ode that taps into electrified anger.
halsey’s if i can’t have love, i want power evokes darkness, too. i recognized the ominous synth patterns of trent reznor and atticus ross, the nine inch nails chord progressions. there’s cruelty, fear, the sheen of anger, in/sanity. i never listened to her music otherwise because the pieces felt overly processed, not quite the pop i like. but this new record hits in the right places for me. her percussive vocals, her liquid resonance.
we saw candyman (2021) and it was everything i hoped it would be. it conjures trypophobia so well: webbed mycelium, lace, pitted orange. the off-screen cops, blue and red flashes turning violet. the manic possession. the horror of a demon and the horror of regular life; the monster of vengeance; the fantasy and meta-narrative of a legend gaining power with every invocation and memory indelibly etched.