>>10433IDK, she had kids and became fabulously wealthy, once you are already rich and famous there's less incentive to try
>>10433>She is also extremely socially conscious and leftistBillie Eilish is pro-Israel FYI. But that's not surprising given her brother and parents' DNC connections.
At least her "friends" Denzel Curry and Kehlani have made posts in support of Palestine.
>>10435oh i thought this was about grimes
>>10437She and Finneas haven't said a single word about Gaza despite other artists who are far less politically outspoken doing so.
Her family is VERY tight with the Biden Administration to the point where she performed at the DNC back in 2020 (in case everyone forgot).
The "zoomer Joan Baez"/"zoomer John Lennon" stuff was all a ploy by the media in order to market her. She literally marched for BLM surrounded by armed security and in a highly gentrified part of LA too (meaning: away from the much larger protests). Then her brother goes on TV and starts stanning Kamala Harris, an actual cop.
>>10435>Billie Eilish is pro-Israel FYI.lol. this is every "socially conscious and leftist" person. meaningless signifiers
>>10440Denzel Curry, Kehlani, NoName, multiple other rappers, even Lauren Jauregui from Fifth Harmony have all come out in support of Palestine.
>>10441Notice how every single one of those people isn’t white. Black folks, Hispanic folks, and especially Arab folks don’t get to pick and choose which political issues they’re allowed to care about. White people can.
>>10442>Black folks, Hispanic folks, and especially Arab folksAgree on the Black and Hispanic but Arabs in America tend to be very apolitical and even reactionary on issues apart from Palestine and US foreign policy in the SWANA. A lot of Arab Americans are petit-bourgeois and it shows.
>>10435>>10441Question: why do we care what pop stars think about Palestine?
>>10441Noname is a legit tankie though.
>>10446It matters a lot actually. A ton of celebrities supported Huey and the BPP.
idk what you expected she's not Doja Cat
I was a fan when she first came out but she’s become way too corporate now. Gucci ads, car ads, yuck.
>>10446If a pop star came out as pro-Israel you’d rage.
>>10433>She was single-handedly usurping the control if the major labels.She was signed to a major label at 14 with only three songs in her repertoire IIRC. Because her brother’s manager had connections.
i thought she was a corporate plant from the first time i heard her; honestly the move away from immediate distrust in all pop music was q cultural defeat, idk why anyone expects anything from the pop music industry.
>>10433>industrialThat’s a joke, right?
>pop music
C'mon now.
>>10461Sounds like something you would've heard in the club in the 90s.
>>10433Her actual rise to fame is straight out of a fucking novel.
Basically, in the mid 2000s the music industry faced a huge slump. Record sales were way down. Different factions of the music industry began to fight with one another to find ways to stabilize this crisis. Here comes this guy from Apple who was the co-creator of iTunes. He comes up with the concept of music streaming back in 2007. It's largely suggested that Big Tech could take over control of the music industry from the major labels.
Fast forward to 2015. Billie Eilish records Ocean Eyes in her brother Finneas' bedroom and they put it on SoundCloud. Finneas' manager is affiliated with Interscope Records and is able to get Billie signed to an artist development company (AKA industry plant greenhouse) called Platoon, which was created by the same co-creator of iTunes and was directly linked to Apple Music. Platoon "incubates" Billie into the perfect artsy-fartsy edgy pop star.
Billie starts releasing a lot of music in the upcoming years and gets a ton of streams on streaming platforms. Apple Music astroturfs her career every step of the way in order to ensure her imminent success. She gets a ton of promotion throughout the entire year of 2018 including a documentary on her album's creation which was, shocker, made specifically for Apple TV. Her album is released in spring 2019, it becomes a worldwide success just as planned. She wins a bunch of Grammys and an Oscar. A total fairytale story.
But the reality is much, much darker. Billie was set up from day one to be a "Bonapartist" figure for Apple, or music streaming services in general. Spotify was also promoting her heavily. One of her major "selling points" that the media emphasized again and again was how Billie was always at odds with her label (Interscope) and how she would always outsmart the old industry players. This was entirely to set up the narrative that a legitimate artist who wasn't a meme or niche act could have a successful career thanks to music streaming with minimal help from the label, and that streaming made labels obsolete.
The thing is, Platoon behaves like a label in all ways except for one: they allow the artist to keep their masters. This is hella important, because streaming platforms need to get approval from whomever owns the masters in order to put the music on their platforms. If the artist owns their masters and doesn't have to go through a label, streaming services can nab the music free of charge/hassel. Not to mention Apple Music would certainly give priority to artists incubated at Platoon, which Apple now owns.
TL:DR – Billie Eilish's entire music career was astroturfed by streaming services so Big Tech could take over control of the music industry from the major labels.
>>10458You have to look at the context though. Billie was planted around the same time SoundCloud rap was becoming a major cultural force. The public truly believed an artist making music in their bedroom or basement could become super-famous thanks to the internet in a completely organic matter because that's what appeared to be happening with all those dudes who made it big off of SoundCloud.
>>10465>TL:DR – Billie Eilish's entire music career was astroturfed by streaming services so Big Tech could take over control of the music industry from the major labels.the labels were always assholes though, does it really matter?
>>10467It's capitalist-on-capitalist violence. Labels are scum but so are streaming platforms. Look at how Spotify barely pays artists.
>>10468Spotify is also unprofitable though, I guess it's the consumers who are getting the biggest benefit here.
>>10470Didn't Spotify make record profits this year?
>>10471According to Google they've still never posted a yearly profit.
>>10472How the fuck tech companies do it?
>>10465Fantastic video comrade. I'm about halfway through and holy shit this is hard-hitting info. Deserves a million views.
>>10473Spotify gives rich fucks like Joe Rogan a billion dollars rather than give it to shareholders. The money is there, it is just re-vested
>>10465Save this video before YouTube removes it. Holy shit the info in this one is revealing.
>>10470If you bothered watching the video Naxal linked you’d know streaming services don’t profit from artists. They profit from subscriptions.
>>10467I get that, but I think in this case what the streaming services are doing is a lot more nefarious. Big Tech has an amount of power and control that the major labels don’t. Just imagine what would happen if Spotify and Apple Music removed all the music made by artists who are pro-Palestine. There’s no way record stores could do that given that they’re decentralized but when it comes to streaming services they could easily pull something like that off.
>>10461>>10480I always hated how weak her vocals are. Even the whisper singing shit has been done a lot better by Black women artists.
>>10451She released two fragrances within the past two years.
As someone who used to work in fragrances, I can assure you: the only reason pop stars come out with a new perfume is if their records sales aren't living up and they need a quick buck to satisfy the label. I wouldn't be surprised if Eilish is signed to a 360 deal (which was practically invented at Interscope) and the label is making her pay up since her sophomore album didn't sell as well.
>>10482They don't profit at all though. That's my point. It takes constant investor capital to keep Spotify going.
>>10483I guess that's true, but at least with Spotify small creators can potentially earn money without needing to have enough cash to print records and push them out to stores.
>>10489>but at least with Spotify small creators can potentially earn moneyStreams are pocket change. Artists keep complaining Spotify doesn't pay them enough for a reason.
Also, playlisting is a huge factor when it comes to how many streams you get.
>>10488>>10490That's called residual income. Streams make like a thousandth of a cent per. And the artist still has to compensate everyone on payroll. But whatever.
>>10491Yeah there's barely any money to be made in music anymore. The real joke is thinking pop stars and rappers are "rich" because of the music and not due to all the side ventures they have like brand endorsements.
>>10433i listened to "bad guy" once and it was one of the worst songs i've ever heard. i think zoomers just like her because she looks drugged out and they like that aesthetic.
>>10446For people as voiceless as the Palestinians, celebrity voices coming to your support are huge.
>>10465Pop stars should be forced to wear the labels of their corporate sponsors, like race cars.
>>10437>John KerrySo she has de facto ties to the State Department? Fucking figures.
>>10440The opposite. The reason the Democrats are abandoning the "woke left" is because the "wokes" are openly challenging US foreign policy en masse.
>>10465>a legitimate artist who wasn't a meme or niche act could have a successful career thanks to music streaming with minimal help from the label,It’s interesting, because one could argue music streaming has made it so pop music overall mainly appeals to niches. Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are probably the last two universal pop acts.
In the 90s there were a ton of one-hit wonder novelty acts. We all use to dance to Cotton Eyed Joe or the Scatman song in gym class as kids. But that was just a small portion of the music that came out in that decade. Now it seems like every other new artist who charts on Billboard for the first time is a novelty act. Doesn’t help either when TikTok is the main music platform.
>>10465I wonder what Eilish’s response would be if musicians decided to unionize specifically to fight back against Apple and Spotify.
Would her loyalty to her sugar daddies outweigh her supposed leftism?
Poptimism was a mistake.
>>10435>>10439>>10450I feel like if she said anything about Palestine her career would fall much harder. Most Hollywood libs draw the line at foreign policy especially when it's such a contentious subject like Palestine.
>>10510They didn’t mind attacking the Iraq War 20 years ago.
>>10437Isn’t John Kerry a master at soft power international relations?
Really makes you think…
>>10514The difference is, Denzel is pretty open about the fact his brother was murdered by cops and about all the racism/anti-Blackness he faced growing up in Miami.
Eilish meanwhile is a known gentrifier who used to culture vulture heavily and has made disparaging remarks about Black artists.
>>10505She probably wouldn't say anything and Finneas would give a typical self-righteous liberal response like: "Now's not the right time to unionize because Spotify is [blah blah blah]."
>>10441None of those artists are anywhere close to as successful as Billie is.
>>10441so did Duwap Kaine
>>10467You missed the fact artists have been angry at music streaming for 13 years now? Remember when Taylor Swift took ALL her music off Spotify for a while?
>>10523Well yeah I can understand why huge artists are mad at streaming, but they are the tiny minority. For most artists it doesn't really make a difference, they can't get a record contract anyway so at least they get some income from streaming even if it's small.
>>10524>Well yeah I can understand why huge artists are mad at streaming, but they are the tiny minority.Actually, most of the anger towards streaming is coming from smaller artists who can't sell out stadiums the way TayTay can.
>>10525Yeah I guess so. I dunno I guess it's a shitty situation. I'm glad I can enjoy music without buying CDs though.
>>10435Her manager is Jewish and she doesn’t own the masters to her own music, so. Not saying all Jews support Israel of course but it’s likely she doesn’t want to anger her manager.
>>10433> Five years ago we were told this girl was going to save pop musicthe issue is that SOPHIE saved pop music 10 years ago and billie eilish was just playing catch up the entire time
>>10529Sarah Bonito saved pop music
>>10455Finneas organized her record deal.
>>10531i unironically think pc music saved pop music and sarah bonito was a big part of it so you're right too, i guess the only difference is that i think SOPHIE was spearheading it even if she wasn't formally a part of pcmus
>>10529>>10531>>10535I just find it weird in thinking someone as obviously planted as Billie Eilish "saved" anything aside from music industry profits. From summer 2018 to when her album dropped it was like you were seeing her everywhere even though she only had a handful of singles to her name and was barely charting on the Hot 100. Her music was always being recommended to you on Spotify and she was doing hundreds of interviews that just so happened to appear in your recommended videos on YouTube. Everyone knew there was a lot of money and effort to make this girl a "thing".
>>10435>DNCYou do realize nearly every single “radical” leftist group in America explicitly tells their followers to vote for Democrats, right?
>>10554I don't know a single anarchist apart from Chomsky and Agent Kochinski who tell people to vote for Dems.
>>10433>basically the zoomer Joan BaezAnd what kind of activist cred does this girl have?
>>10600BLM abd telling people to vote for Biden.
>>10604>surrounded by securityOf fucking course.
>>10526Music streaming is all part of the move towards neo-feudalism. No one owns anything anymore, you pay big porkies to rent and subscribe. It’s the sane reason why the banks won’t allow you to buy a house: they insist on keeping you a lifelong renter. Spotify and Apple Music work the sane way where you don’t pay for vinyls or CDs but pay for a subscription. They own, you pay rent.
>>10554Why is PSL running their own candidates then? I'm not defending PSL I'm just asking.
>>10700>banks won’t allow you to buy a houseHome owning is a bourgeois condition.
>Spotify and Apple Music work the sane way where you don’t pay for vinyls or CDs but pay for a subscription. They own, you pay rent.Just pirate the music and burn it on a disk.
>>10758If you watch her live performances it’s pretty obvious she’s sharp as fuck most of the time. Like she has to force herself to stay on-key.
>>10485can you post some of these Black artists, I'm looking for new music?
>>10761I'm
>>10758 so not a good resource for this but definitely check out FKA Twigs if you haven't gotten into her yet. Caprisongs not as much for that style of singing, but her albums and EPs for sure.
>>10485Interestingly enough, one of the reasons she’s not nearly as successful as she was five years ago is because people no longer want to hear a white girl doing gentrified R&B, they want to hear Black women doing the real thing. Look at the pop charts today and you’ll see it’s dominated by SZA clones not Billie Eilish clones.
>>10758For me, it's a combination of her weak vocals but also how she's such a try-hard when it comes to trying to sound edgy, like she's trying to do the Lingua Ignota thing where she wants to combine harsh industrial-sounding or dark ambient instrumentals with melodic angelic vocals. But it all sounds so contrived.
As for Finneas, well if you saw my posts in the thread on music sampling you already know I'm biased given that a lot of what I listen to is hip hop produced by artbros, but I can safely say Finneas is overall a meh-tier producer. He's an industry guy so he knows exactly how to make critic bait and appease his overlords but he's just not very innovative. Kanye West has been a more innovative producer than him if we're talking about mainstream pop music.
>>10763people mostly just want pop stars that they want to fuck
most anyone can be trained to sing, and songwriters and producers exist for the artistic aspect
>>10762thanks for the recommendation
>>10764>For me, it's a combination of her weak vocals but also how she's such a try-hard when it comes to trying to sound edgy, like she's trying to do the Lingua Ignota thing where she wants to combine harsh industrial-sounding or dark ambient instrumentals with melodic angelic vocals. But it all sounds so contrived.This is the biggest thing that turns me off from her music. It's "dark" inasmuch as mass appeal permits it to be. I think Billie has been able to tap into that market so successfully partially because she herself is not very passionate about music, whether her own or created by others. Finneas a bit more musically curious, but comes off somewhat opportunistic. Like most people, they've been enculturated by the most mainstream pop music since birth and not much else, now they make music of their own but with a "dark side" whose boundaries are hemmed in by their own limited knowledge base and, in Finneas' case IMO, an eye to what trends and sells well. Lingua Ignota is an intense comparison to make, but if Eilish's music was a lot more keen on stuff like menacing, glitchy production, utilizing noise, or dissonance in melody or harmony alongside the breathy soprano vocals, it'd be easier to take the darkness seriously. Plenty of artists have gotten money, notoriety, and critical acclaim from fusing dark or alienating sounds with pop sensibilities so it's not like she has to be Ramleh or it's poser shit. Being a "dark" artist while insisting on operating within the parameters of the industry core just kneecaps your quality from the start. If you want to be a mainstream pop act, it's better to have little pretense about what it is you really do.
>>10766Happy to help. Enjoy :)
>>10767Keep in mind, Finneas is a technician, which is exactly what industry people love. If you've ever heard his solo work you'd probably cringe, since most of it sounds identical to mid 2000s adult contemporary garbage.
>Lingua Ignota is an intense comparison to make, but if Eilish's music was a lot more keen on stuff like menacing, glitchy production, utilizing noise, or dissonance in melody or harmony alongside the breathy soprano vocals, it'd be easier to take the darkness seriously.Exactly, and her being a mainstream pop act from day one (incubated at an Apple-affiliated artist development company, signed to a major label with only a few SoundCloud songs to her name, very little previous musical training) means she lacks the same creativity or subversiveness you see in the underground or in industrial/noise subcultures.
>Being a "dark" artist while insisting on operating within the parameters of the industry core just kneecaps your quality from the start. If you want to be a mainstream pop act, it's better to have little pretense about what it is you really do.To be fair, there was a time in the 90s when edgy artists like NIN and Marilyn Manson had a good amount of mainstream success, but that bird has already flown.
>>10767>>10768It’s hard to take her seriously as a “dark and edgy” artist when she’s a full blown Biden supporter. Most industrial/noise artists are either far-right fascists or far-left commies and the extremist politics is a significant part of the music.
>>10767>she herself is not very passionate about music, whether her own or created by others.What makes you assume this?
>>10770Hip hop and industrial (also punk) are known for being subversive genres, so it doesn't surprise me that Eyelash would appropriate those.
>>10771>>she herself is not very passionate about music, whether her own or created by others.>What makes you assume this?I don't doubt that Billie likes her music and performing it, enjoys the creative process, and gets some catharsis out of it. I say she doesn't seem passionate about music for a few reasons.
(1) Her sound and influences are extremely average. It all comes from very popular music that someone born in the early 2000s would hear on top 40 and pop stations throughout their life. This demonstrates an incurious and complacent mindset towards music. It's not her age because my music friends and I were more knowledgeable and eclectic when it came to music in high school than Billie at the same age by orders of a magnitude.
(2) I don't get the impression she's ever animated by a profound need for musical creation or expression. She's yet to seriously learn an instrument. Her brother to his credit took up music production. She's a famous musician because, well, it's cool to be one, isn't it? Unlike most people who entertain the fantasy, her family had the connections to give her a shot at it.
(3) Neither sibling seems to have even remotely what could be called "sophisticated ear" for tune in my view. Their chord progressions and melodies are on par with the predictability and blandness of any other run-of-the-mill pop song. They almost always go to the chord or note you most expect to hear next. Some predictability can a huge, huge asset in music, but there's such a thing as too much.
Compare the choral music in
>>10764 with a song from FKA Twigs debut album in vid rel. Billie essentially sings some minor chords (the first chord in the bar is technically a major seventh) that first resolve to the dominant (don't let the jargon confuse you, this is very, very, standard stuff), which then repeat but instead move to a dominant 7 at the end of the line on "heaven" and then "gods" to evoke an otherworldly, majestic vibe with an unexpectedly flat chord from outside the scale (a common compositional technique; common =/= necessarily bad). It's by-the-numbers "angelic chorale" with a calculated, mawkish twist.
Twigs has a different approach. She sings parallel perfect fourths over a drone and the vocals become slightly more polyphonic as the song goes on, all common features of real medieval liturgical music (parallel harmony, perfect fourths, drones, and polyphony). Perfect fourths are super common in modern music, but it's highly unusual to hear them in parallel harmony like this, which turns a usually consonant interval into a weakly dissonant one. This creates not just a sense of dissonance, but also some intrigue and ambiguity since perfect fourths being "perfect" are neither major nor minor. Being that we are now centuries from medieval musical traditions, their techniques can sometimes sound exotic and mysterious to us. Ultimately it makes for a fresher, more dynamic take on the "angelic choir" sound.
>INB4 misogyny/ageism allegationsI love Kate Bush and Fiona Apple, both of whom debuted around 18 years old with great records they wrote and composed themselves.
Billie's a dabbler, not (yet?) a creative. I don't hate her personally or as a musician. I've just seen every facet of her shtick done much better by many other artists to be impressed so far.
>>10776Yeah, and one thing I notice is how in interviews Billie and Finneas spend most of the time talking about their personal lives and what it's like working together as siblings. Compare that to when more established producers are interviewed and you'll notice how they come off as far more cultured than expected and talk almost entirely about insider musician stuff.
>Her sound and influences are extremely average. It all comes from very popular music that someone born in the early 2000s would hear on top 40 and pop stations throughout their life. This demonstrates an incurious and complacent mindset towards music. She's talked about listening to jazz before but in all honesty the kind of jazz she's influenced by is VERY basic stuff, like Johnny Mathis or something.
>I don't get the impression she's ever animated by a profound need for musical creation or expression. She seems far more interested in meeting her favourite rappers and fashion designers than the actual music. Finneas comes off as an ego maniac who's primarily in it for his own ego.
>her family had the connections to give her a shot at it.What's also interesting is how her uncle is a former member of Congress and her family has political connections as well as entertainment industry ones. Makes A LOT of sense that she would get acclaim for being "socially conscious" or specifically appeal to the white liberal crowd as a kind of Gen Z saviour.
>Neither sibling seems to have even remotely what could be called "sophisticated ear" for tune in my view. Their chord progressions and melodies are on par with the predictability and blandness of any other run-of-the-mill pop song. They almost always go to the chord or note you most expect to hear next. Some predictability can a huge, huge asset in music, but there's such a thing as too much.I listen to a lot of avant-garde and "artsy" stuff (not to sound pretentious) and I love it when the music deliberately sounds chaotic and off-the-wall to the point where it makes your ears bleed or causes you to go "WTF is this???". I don't think anyone will listen to Billie's work and say: "I DON'T GET THIS". It's very formulaic. At least Twigs sounds more whimsical and unpredictable.
>>10780Good points. I've seen a few of their interviews and definitely noticed they only seem to really talk about their personal lives and don't get into substantive music discussion.
>Compare that to when more established producers are interviewed and you'll notice how they come off as far more cultured than expected and talk almost entirely about insider musician stuff.And this is a hallmark of great artists.
>>10782Try this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOlAd5bG_Zk
>>10785What's your point?
Here’s a real subversive artist, even though her politics seem a little too right-ish.
https://www.electronicbeats.net/astrid-gnosis-feature/Basically Billie wishes she was Gnosis.
>>10789Billie doesn’t have the vocal ability to do this.
>>10789If Billie wanted to be counter-hegemonic she would be openly embracing radical politics, which she's not. All she does is ASMR vocals over dollar store Aphex Twin beats.
>>10804>>10812I find it sad this board know who Boyd Rice is.
>>10758She CAN sing though. She literally belts at the end of Happier Than Ever.
>>10840Not that impressive TBH.
>>10812Fingers crossed brother!
>>10485>>10761Eyelash sounds like Erykah Badu if Erykah ate two jars of mayonnaise and lost everything that makes her voice sound sensual and unique.
>>10467>>10523>>10524>>10525>>10526>>10700If record labels dry up it's because they've become de facto obsolete as streaming has taken over. Although now that everyone seems to be into buying vinyls since everyone now realizes what a scam it is to keep paying for subscriptions for music that's not even "yours" (rent essentially) I'd be curious to see how much longer this lasts.
>>10812TBQH I wouldn’t be surprised if she goes through a fascist phase. Something about her seems very fascistic.
>>10894Doubtful. Artists who take up an interest in fash do so because fascism is so despicable they see it as intriguing. It’s about exploring an evil that most people won’t touch. I don’t think Eilish has the intellectual capability to see this.
Billie Eillish's stuff is hipster, pretending to be against the norm, but really just being a commodified version of rejecting popular stuff while also being part of pop music. Overrated, with maybe a couple good hits.
>>11020Yes, and I'm always weary every time the mainstream media praises an upcoming artist as counter-hegemonic (not the words they used obviously but you got that impression given what the press was saying about her five years ago). Outsider artists don't get praise from the entire industry nor do they parade themselves all over mainstream media looking for clout. Most outsider artists who happen to get praise from the mainstream will reject all that publicity and agree to lay low.
How many Grammys did she win last night?
>>10511>They didn’t mind attacking the Iraq War 20 years ago.not true, especially at the beginning. Several people were fired over being against the war in iraq including phil donahue from MSNBC
>>11334The point is, there were multiple public figures who spoke out against the war knowing they’d be cancelled for it. Look at what happened to the Dixie Chicks.
>>11336They tried forcing Tate McRae on everyone around the same time but she didn't stick.
>>10435She wore a CEASEFIRE NOW pin at the Oscars just now.
>>11365Too little too late.
Even Biden is calling for a ceasefire now (in theory, not in practice obviously), namely because paying for Israel's war is too expensive and he'd rather see that money go to Ukraine to kill Russians.
>>11667100% pure pandering to the vinylheads.
Every single thing this girl does is calculated. She's smart since she knows where the clout is.
>>11667damn she's only 22?
>>11667Don't remember hearing any singles off her last album on the radio so why not.
>>11686I saw that she said she intends for the album to be a whole experience, or something along those lines. My first instinct is this is how big artists game the system now; just racking up more streams than if they'd done the listeners' work for them and highlighted the standouts. Taylor Swift just proved the viability of that strategy—over 300 million streams on her 31-song double album release in 24 hours with no promotional singles. "My album is too artistic to not be listened to as a complete work" is gimmicky bullshit. Big, "artsy" pop musicians have released singles countless times before: Bjork, Radiohead, David Bowie, Kendrick Lamar, Aphex Twin, et al. Non-pop musicians do it too: Swans, King Gizzard, even Throbbing Gristle put out singles in the 70s and 80s. The list goes on and on. The no-singles release has its roots in the surprise album drop trend that started like a decade ago (I think it was Beyonce's self-titled?). It made a big splash the first few times, but it stopped being "buzzworthy" once all the other big pop artists started doing it.
>>11724Meaning, it’s a gimmick and pandering.
>>11725Yeah that's what I said.
Taylor will always outstream her.
>>11763Bait but I'll respond seriously anyway. The reason Taylor Swift is so successful is because her music is first of all unchallenging even within her genre. It is secondly because Taylor Swift writes banal pop music that appeals to equally banal cis, straight, middle class, under 40, white women of America (a very large demographic indeed). These Swifties likely project onto her and imagine their completely average lives as more glamorous, affluent, and cinematic than they really are. In other words, Taylor Swift is the Cheesecake Factory of music.
>>11769Eilish isn’t much different.
>>11770You can't throw a rock in any Target store in America without hitting a Swiftie. Basic straight white suburban women are just that commonplace. Billie Eilish writes to the somewhat more niche genre of teenage (pseudo?) angst, and is just edgy enough that it makes the most boring people on the planet slightly uncomfortable. I've been dunking on her music for being fake edgy/fake deep in this thread so this is not a compliment to her. Taylor Swift is just that much more bland with a larger pool of potential fans to tap into.
>>11668She reminds me a lot of Madonna in how she knows how to be shocking and calculates everything.
>>10502only when it comes to palestine. they tend to stay in line when it comes to ukkkraine, taiwan, and iran, either because they're delusional (about china and russia) or because they've internalized their own domestic politics on the global stage ("iran is LITERALLY a muslim theocracy, america MUST be more progressive because I think in purely culture war terms!!!")
>>11835>I prefer her Argentine doppelgänger.Damn she really does look like her (and sings pretty good too)
>>11915No one is going to pay over $200 to see this white girl whisper into a microphone barely on-key.
>>12039Unfortunately tens of thousands have already paid that or more, the fact there's unsold seats doesn't mean they won't make shitloads of money
>>12039If I paid $200 to see TayTay I'd know I was going to see an epic concert even if her music is hella bland.
Can't say the same about Eyelash. I saw footage of her shows from 2019 and they looked incredibly dull.
>>11915She needs to sell tickets at an exorbitantly high price to make up for low streams/sales.
>>12179Really bland. I mean REALLY bland. I keep expecting her to do a Merzbow or Diamanda Galas thing and she never delivers. At the most, she’s trying to do a really bad MIA impression.
>>12179She was retarded for releasing her album during the Drake-Kendrick beef and Rafah invasion.
>>11799Not at all. Madonna at her peak was shocking in a way that scared the establishment shitless. Her videos were always being banned from MTV because they rustled too many jimmies with religious imagery, sex, etc.
Billie is "shocking" in a way that makes the establishment praise her, because they're impressed that a little white girl has it in her to be edgy. Basically, "awww how cute!".
>>12214On a similar token, Billie doesn't really seem to invent trends as much as she follows them. In 2018 she had the image of a SoundCloud rapper, which is what was popping at the time. Now that 90s and Y2K nostalgia are big it makes sense as to why she'd use that to her advantage too.
>>10465>streaming made labels obsoleteNeofeudal ownership and rents extraction means bourgeois competition is irrelevant
>Billie was plantedPodpeople
>>12224Ironic part about Madonna is that while she may have been shocking in her time, she was honestly quite subtle and tasteful and actually made MUSIC compared to how vulgar and untalented a lot of "musicians" are today. Lady Gaga and Billie WISH they were as cool as Madonna was.
>>12225I see. Could you elaborate?
>>12226Which is why I have to respect Madonna even though I agree with most of the criticism levied at her from cultural theorists like bell hooks and such. At least Madonna was quite sophisticated in how she shocked people. Eyelash just doesn't seem to have the intellect to pull something like that off, so every time she tries to "shock" people it always comes off as immature and cliché.
You think her newest song will hit no.1 on Billboard next week?
I’m thinking not given that she’s competing with Kendrick and Taylor.
>>12240She has just as much payola as TayTay. I expect her to land on the top 5.
>>12240This is so weird. We have two gems in the top charts. And then there's Taylor who's so painfully mid that I will never understand her music, same with any country artist. Yet her music is soooo popular it's insane, she was even mentioned in Sonic Twitter Takeover. Like, wtf? She's fucking everywhere, I cannot escape her. Corey Taylor was right, pop music was a mistake. I am an insufferable hipster now, look what you did, music industry, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW!?
>>10433Her rise was carefully managed. She is as manufactured as they come.
the plant ain't shit
>>11667she looks like Travolta in Pulp Fiction here
>>12379Exactly. And like others have said, given the image of someone clunter hegemonic.
>>12240It hit no.5. Kendrick and Post Malone are still doing better than her.
>>12385>no.5>not debuting at no.1 despite all the payola>post malone of all people is doing better numbersI'm sure her team has already said this is a good thing actually.
>>12331>vote like your life depends on itAh, yes, Mr. Biden, my one vote is a great contribution to society, I can definitely change the tides of history by being an isolated voter whose vote is like a spit in an ocean.
Why do people believe in this bullshit? Electoralism is such an obvious scam it's not even funny.
>>11335Yeah but they DID get cancelled for it. Which is why the Dixie chicks are D-Listers now
>>12542Yes, so I would expect someone with as big a machine behind her as Billie to be much more outspoken about anti-war.
>>12533So she’s in her flop era now?
>>12549More like, Eyelash and TayTay are beefing over who's doing the better numbers. Billie has thrown shade at Taylor in several recent interviews and her manager made snarky tweets which mentioned Taylor explicitly.
TBH I think Billie's popularity is on the wane and she knows it. No one gives a shit about her anymore. If Kendrick dropped a full album next week you can be sure it would do phenomenal numbers because people see him as an interesting artist.
>>10433>She is also extremely socially conscious and leftist, basically the zoomer Joan Baez. Yeah but ironically Gen Z doesn’t seem to care about political music. At all. Billie Eilish put out two acoustic songs about politics last year and they went nowhere. That Macklemore song about Hind’s Hall didn’t even chart on Billboard.
>>10433>Five years ago we were told this girl was going to save pop music.Propaganda.
All the hype around her was a ploy to promote music streaming as others on here have said.
Now she’s pushing vinyl to cover up this fact.
Billie Eilish makes music for vapid zillennial nepo babies who envision their lives as an Ottessa Moshfegh novel.
>>12533Two weeks after her album dropped and her chart performance is dismal. Booted from the top 10 on the singles chart by Eminem and Hozier.
>>12561I mean, does she have any political songs on her new album?
Okay, everything aside can we get a REAL Marxist analysis of Billie Eilish and her shitty, overrated music?
>>12679Even the mediocre can spread there wings if they have the leisure and connections.
>>12610People are losing interest in her. It's not just because she dropped an album only a few weeks after Beyoncé and TayTay did but also because no one wants to hear a sad white girl whisper into a mic anymore.
Between 2013-2021ish pop music was very low-tempo, dark, and melancholy. Distorted 808s and eerie synths were commonplace (think: trap, SoundCloud rap, all the pop singers who sounded like Lorde or Sia during that time). Now, that style of music already sounds dated and no one wants it anymore. Billie Eilish was very much a part of that wave and she's stuck in it. The Weeknd doesn't make that style of music anymore. 21 Savage raps over soul samples that sound like they were made by The Alchemist now and has become more socially conscious. Jazz rap is fashionable. Snoop, Nas, and Common are doing better numbers than SoundCloud dweebs. The reason Taylor Swift and Beyoncé are selling like hotcakes is because both of them are universal pop stars whose music appeals to a universal audience and can both put on epic live shows with all sorts of bells and whistles. Anyone who's seen Billie live will know she's awful at performing and can barely stay on-key. The only reason she's still around is because the machine she has is huge.
>>12688The only place I hear her music anymore is TikTok and IG. Her whole album was Reels-fodder.
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