Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever
Alternative/Pop – Released July 30, 2021 – 16 songs, 56 mins
*****BUZZ PICK*****
LUNDI
Make room in the trophy cabinet. Singer songwriter extraordinaire Billie Eilish returns with producer and brother Finneas on Happier Than Ever. At the ripe age of 19, this sophomore album is sure to be awards bait come Grammy season.
To me this album is required to be broken down into two distinct parts. Billie & Finneas. Neither is what they are today without each other.
Finneas has become THE pop producer and he shines on this album. Assisting with song writing is a bonus but the production is just right on almost every track. He manages to be creative, selective, yet daring in what he’s done while at the same time never outshining his sisters vocals.
Speaking of the sister, Billie is the contemporary pop queen of writing. No really, based on a recent study she has the most unique vocabulary of her peers. While that might not be easy to pick up on without really digging in there’s zero doubt about her skills. The album is filled with the unbearable emotions of teenage stardom and while I certainly can’t relate directly she turns her experiences into relatable and meaningful songs. On top of that is her voice. That voice, it’s just so damn good and it absolutely checks out in the live performances.
The duo is just extraordinary. Generation defining talents. Happier Than Ever is their best work yet. Critically and personally it’s damn good.
Overall Rating: 9.0/10
Favourite Song: Happier Than Ever
REID
Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell. Quite a name, talent and performer. My experience with her began like many - what is this intoxicating noise and who is making it? You guessed it, Bad Guy. That great single along with mainstream and friend group praise led me to her first studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. The more I uncovered, the more I was impressed. This girl is out there selling millions of records as a teenager. Writing and producing songs with her brother in his bedroom, channeling Missy Elliot with the baggy clothes and giving zero fucks what anyone has to say about it. Before I knew it, Ocean Eyes from her debut EP was a staple and I was obsessing over her 2020 Grammy performance of when the party’s over. If we can draw a positive out of the pandemic, it’s unexpected new music. The crew at Too Sweet Reviews were pumped to see this one coming. Hopefully ‘Happier Than Ever’ lives up to the hype.
When someone is in the public eye so often, listening to their record can be revealing. Especially when they lay it all out on the line. ‘Happier Than Ever’ does just that. Billie is getting older under a microscope and is dealing with the peaks and valleys it brings. She doesn’t know it all and doesn’t claim to. But she certainly has this music thing figured out.
Finneas and Billie know her strengths and play to them so well. She shows her sexual side in Billie Bossa Nova, Oxytocin and NDA while staying true to herself as a role model in My Future, Gold Winged and Happier Than Ever. Your Power is an instant acoustic classic with a heavy message about older men and their influence on younger women. Not My Responsibility is a mic-dropping interlude on the ridiculous body image expectations in the industry. I can’t summarize it better than the actual message.
In Happier Than Ever, Billie shows off her ability to be sexy, clueless, playfully confident, weak and honest. She oozes similar talent and swagger levels as her previous, chart topping release. This time with more fuel to the fire with additional freedom of expression.
Overall Rating: 8.5/10
Favourite Song: Your Power
ROZ
This is the only way I can correctly start this review: Billie Eilish's voice, my God. I can't stress enough how great of a singer she is, which I realized way back when I heard her song Ocean Eyes from her debut EP. Soothing and melancholy, her quiet whispers dig deep into your ear canal and stay there. Her songwriting hits a lot of serious topics such as her ever-growing fame and influence within the pop culture world, the cult of personality and issues that face her due to said fame, and the over-sexualization and lose-lose situation the media and tabloids put her in. Wear too much clothes? Bad. Wear too little clothes? Bad also. It makes me very happy to see that she has a great mindset and attitude towards all of the vultures within the industry and follows up by giving them a resounding "Fuck you and fuck right off".
Finneas is an outstanding producer. His mastery of the low end (somehow the bass in Oxytocin is wall shaking yet still so cleanly placed within the mix). The way he chops and processes his samples and instrumentation (his use of panning, or moving sounds left and right, adds a really nice effect in many tracks). His use of unique sounds to fill space (examples include 1:52 of I Didn't Change My Number and 1:02 of NDA) flexes his creative and artistic muscles. I draw parallels between him and another personal favorite pop producer of mine, 40/Noah James Shebib. Shebib and Finneas use a specific method to accentuate the singer and leave room in the mix by specifically focusing on low end and mid range frequencies, scooping out sounds in the higher ranges and leaving room to really let the vocalist shine. Alright alright, my music nerd rant is over - thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
There were quite a few standout tracks on Happier Than Ever, and my shortlist includes Oxytocin, GOLDWING, Halley's Comet and OverHeated. All of these tracks bring together creative production choices along with Billie's amazing singing voice. As far as negatives? There really isn't anything that sticks out in my mind, as the "weaker" songs still have purpose (for example, the soothing yet powerful monologue she gives in Not My Responsibility transitions into Finneas flipping the samples into an awesome track). This sibling duo does not miss - I've been impressed by all of their music so far and this album is no exception. Combining fantastic pop productions with one of the nicest singing voices of this generation, Happier Than Ever elevates itself outside of the pop music bubble and onto a level of it's own.
Overall Rating - 8.5/10
Favourite Song - Oxytocin