Switched on Pop - ICYMI: Billie Eilish is a Different Kind of Pop Star (ft. FINNEAS)

Episode Date: December 31, 2019

On a trajectory to be one of the biggest pop stars for this generation, seventeen year old Billie Eilish is not, however, your typical pop star. Her music speaks to the real anxieties of young people without any veneer. She sings from the perspective of monsters and villains. Her hushed voice, baggy style, and direct demeanor subvert the norms of the pop princess. And her music is dark, but still catchy. Billie co-writes and produces her sound with her older brother Finneas O’Connell. Together this family duo have crafted the second biggest selling album of 2019, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” On this episode, we examine how Billie and Finneas crafted a cultural phenomenon, why their message speaks to this generation, and we speak with Finneas about the creation of their hit song “Bad Guy.” MORE Watch Billie and Finneas break down “Bury A Friend” on The New York TimesBillie Eilish – Ocean Eyes Billie Eilish – Bored Billie Eilish – You Should See Me In A Crown Billie Eilish – Bad Guy Billie Eilish – Bury A Friend Marilyn Manson – The Beautiful People The Doors – People Are Strange Nine Inch Nails – Closer Billie Eilish – ilomilo Billie Eilish – All Good Girls Go To Hell Billie Eilish – Xanny Frank Sinatra – Dream A Dream Billie Eilish – I love you John Carpenter – Halloween Theme Billie Eilish – Bellyache MORE Billie Eilish explained on Vox.com Watch Billie and Finneas break down “Bury A Friend” on The New York Times Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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about my superhero theory of pop music. No, I definitely would have remembered. What's that? Okay, so it's basically this idea that super pop stars are like superheroes and they have a similar story arc of superheroes. First you get like the origin story. You confront some major thing and eventually they team up

with other people and get featured, you know, on some kind of big team of other superheroes. And then eventually like things turn around and you get the anti-hero story. You get like the dark side of them. You know, you could look at someone like Ariana Grande where it's like you get Disney Princess who then like teams up with producer Zed and eventually puts out this, dark record. Thank you next, right? Like the whole arc of the superhero. Interesting. Okay, so in this analogy, being bit by a radioactive spider is like kind of equivalent to getting signed to a major label. Your extension of this analogy is perfect because the other thing that happens in superhero narratives is that every couple of years they get

rebooted. How many Spider-Man's have we had? Like 17? Okay, I'm with you. I'm with you. Superheroes have to have a narrative that sort of speaks to their time and their generation. and eventually they age out and there's a new audience that needs a superhero that speaks to the issues of the moment. And in pop music, I think we're going through a transition and there's no better superhero, super pop star to look at than Billy Eilish.

She just perfectly captures this moment. I can't wait. All right, a new pop hero emerges. Let's do it. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Okay, so Nate, I feel like there's a couple of things that we need to do here. This is sort of an atypical

Switched-on pop piece. For an atypical artist, yeah, appropriate. Exactly. It's like, generally, we're going to just take, like, one song and break it down. Right. But Billy Eilish is kind of bigger than any one song. And so I think today what we need to do is figure out, who is she, where did she come from? Why is she so essential to this cultural moment? And of course, we need to dig deep into her music. Word, right. I like it. The appetizer platter approach. I went around and asking a bunch of our friends if they had heard of Billy Eilish. Guess what the response was? Ooh, I'm going to guess a mix. I'm going to say some were like, love her, some were like never heard of her, some were like, kind of?

What was it, what was it actually? I was with about 15 friends yesterday and all of them said who? Oh, okay. I stand corrected. Which says maybe a generation gap happening here. Yeah. Yeah, this is a generational gap. And so what I want to do is for those of us who might be in a generational gap, you are missing out on a total phenomenon.

And so just very briefly, Billy Eilish, who is she? She is a 17-year-old, homeschooled singer-songwriter. She's from Los Angeles. And after three years of putting up music, released an album. She makes all of her music with her, brother, Phineas, they do it independently. They mostly record it in their bedroom at home. Huh. She was discovered on SoundCloud. They released a song called Ocean Eyes. For some time, can't stop staring at those ocean eyes. I think she was like 14 at the time.

Oh, wow. Yeah. That's crazy. Okay. It was remixed a bunch of times. It went viral. Song placements on Netflix's show 13 reasons why. I just wanted you to think of that right now. As I said, she's just released her first album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? It's the second biggest album drop of this year. And I think we can't move any further along without hearing Billy Eilish claiming her crown. Okay, yeah, let's spin that.

You should see me in a crime. What do you think of that? I think she makes a strong case for royalty. We'll get into it. But something I love about her music is this sense of like sharp contrast. And this song is such a perfect example. That element of surprise is like such a pleasurable and exciting part of her music, I think. I think it's really stunning how she is really self-aware at a young age and recognizes that she's stepping into a spotlight that is enormous.

and she's doing it with sort of an awesome power grab. And I mean this in the best way, where she's like, oh, you think I'm pretty? You think I'm yours? You should see me in the crown. I'm going to make people bow. It's a potent lyric. No doubt.

To me, this track and so much of her music, is all about dynamics. Dynamics being maybe a fancy term for saying soft and loud. Fortissimo, pianissimo. I think she and brother producer Phineas are like just such masters. of like creating these soft, you know, this song is a great example,

these soft, quiet textures that suddenly erupt into like loud, rough, surprising sounds. You know, pop music is not a place for a lot of dynamics. Things tend to just be kind of loud and steady, but I think it's such a key part of her song and like you really get the sense that, yeah, she's earned that crown because the music supports it and it delivers that power from silence to deafening loudness. Very cool. I also like that it unites so many different styles where I feel like we have in the sort of quiet, whispery verses the sort of electronic singer songwritery thing going on.

And then in the chorus, it's trap music and wobble-based dubstep and everything. But, you know, kind of as I was saying earlier, I felt like I really like her music. It speaks to me. But I also know that as the next generation of mega pop stardom, I feel like her work wasn't maybe made for me and maybe I'm missing something. Billy Elish is an icon. She's essential. You can't go anywhere without bumping into her.

And yet, you know, we're a bit older and just we, it seems like some of our friends weren't really in on the message. And I thought to really get a sense of what is Billy's music about? Why does she feel so culturally important to this new job? generation. So I asked my cousins, what do you think of Billy's music? Yeah, I love her. I love her. I just like the feeling of her songs. When I heard like Billy's, it was so different from what I was used to, and I really liked it. Her songs are different, and like each song is, like, new. I don't know, it just, it felt different from most of, like, the, I was hearing, like, the same thing on the

radio over and over. I guess just very different. It's not cookie cutter. Like pop songs just to be pop songs. What do you think of these kids? I think they're coming for our jobs, honestly. Yeah, I think we, just by dint of our age and distance from this music, like maybe come at it from a sort of anthropological perspective a little bit.

And for your cousins, it's like this music. so clearly resonates in a deeply personal way with them. And so I definitely want to explore that more, yeah. And if there's one thing that really stuck out, what did you hear? This is new. It's different. Yeah, this is like, this stands out. Yeah, it's different.

And really, what I'm hearing under difference is this idea of contrast to what came before. When we use our superhero narrative, we've kind of had like a couple of generations of different heroes in pop music. If we just sort of went very big picture, in like the 2010s, there was this like bubblegum pop thing that was happening, right? And then it sort of bled into a EDM sound that then I think now has sort of molded into primarily

a trap music bass aesthetic. And what does sound reaches its fadish heights? Something needs to come in and take its place. I think Billy, she's here representing something, which looks different, sounds different, feels different. And I was just sort of like digging into this, thinking about what are some of the ways that she is different? One thing that stuck out to me first was that she feels a bit like a rejection of the perfect,

shiny, feminine pop star. Yes. She wears baggy clothes. She actually refuses to smile and talks about that publicly about how she doesn't, like, you haven't earned my smile. She feels like, rather than, like, the story of the anti-hero coming towards the end of someone's career, it feels like it's the very beginning. There's a song that I think captures this really well.

It's her song, Bad Guy. So you're a tough guy, like you really roll away so puff. I'm the bad guy. Yeah. Duh. Well, this is fun. She is taking on the character of the bad guy. and there's some sort of salacious lyrics perhaps,

but it's also kind of putting on a character and being really goofy in it, right? That, duh, it's like, I'm the bad guy, and her voice has been manipulated to sound, it sounds like one of those machines that you see in heist movies and they put it over your voice so you can't tell who it is.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, you've done that to her voice, and then she's like, duh. So she's like playing with all of the, ideas of is she, does she have to be the good girl or can she be the bad guy? And it's humorous too. Like there's satire as much as there's commentary. It really feels very smart. It also reminds me of, well, someone who's kind of doing a similar thing back in the 90s. Interesting. I should have a guess you.

Your shame. Your nine inch nails devotion is shameless. I love it. I love it. No, and I totally, I totally see the connection. It's true. You know, you had in the 90s, you had Trent Resner from Nine-inch Nails with a similar sort of vocal quality, this whispered, dark sound over these dark electronic beats. Coming out into a period of culture that was not ready for something that might be so explicit and dark in exploring some of the underbelly of the human experience. I mean, I'm hearing obviously a similarity with Billy's music. She has this interesting way of acknowledging the dark sides of life. There is a certain almost like nihilistic quality to some of her music.

And she does it by taking on all of these different characters and roles. I think another great example is in her song, Barry a Friend. What do you want for me while asleep? Where do we go? Ooh. What do you think of that? Oh, that is just delightful. It's hard to stop it, honestly, because it really draws you in. It's swung in the sense of, like, you know, think of a jazz drummer a little bit.

It's got this kind of loping feel. The melody has this almost, like, inevitable precision to it. Her vocal tone, like you were saying, is so crisp and intimate. I like it. Yeah. Here again, she's taking on a dark character. she's actually playing the role of the monster under her bed. Isn't that great?

I get it. I get it. It's spooky. It's totally spooky. And the song is complete with horror screams, again, modified vocals that make her sound like a monster. There's a real teenage introspection on the darkness of life, but from a like childhood-like character, the monster under her bed. Right. It's a very creative lyric.

It's also, again, harkens to other music that I've heard in the past that deals with darkness and strangeness that is unseen. Let's go back to the 90s again. Okay, yeah, dig us there. So here you've got Marilyn Manson's beautiful people. And really, this just the shuffle feel. Totally. Right? It reminded me of that.

Right? Oh, and that jazz drumming is going to come back. I'm really excited to share this with you. But we're going to come back to your jazz drumming because, you know, professor of musicology. I'll put the jazz. Put the jazz back in my pocket. Keep it there for later. Keep it warm.

It'll be ready. Whenever you need to say the word, jazz. So like Marilyn Manson in the 90s and Trent Resner in the 90s, there is this, looking at some of the darker elements of life. But actually, I'm hearing things that are going all the way back into the six. these as well into someone who is known for their poetics of some of the stranger parts of life. People are strange When you're a stranger Faces look ugly

When you're alone Women seem wicked When you're unwanted Streets are on evil Huh Just to get it in your ear Let's play that back to Next to bury a friend again

Yeah What do you want for me Why don't you run for you There's a total melodic similarity there. Who knows if it's intentional or not, but I like you drawing that connection. There's melodic overlap and there's a certain

alienation that you hear in the doors that you also hear in Billy Ilish. Doors, people are strange. Marilyn Manson, beautiful people, and here we have Barry a friend. She has this way of looking at some of these harder things in life. If I have to ask her like a larger question

of why is Billy essential to this moment? I think it's that She speaks to not just teenage angst in general and every group of teenagers needs a new pop star, but I actually think she's speaking to issues of this moment. And she tackles things that are challenging. She looks at questions of teen suicide. Oh, wow. The friends I've had to bear that keep me up at night.

It's very dark. Wow, yeah. This song reminded me actually of something. thing that you told me about, one of, something that a student said to you. Do you remember the story of when a student said, hey, you should listen to Gucci Gang? Gucci Gang, Gucci Gang, Gucci Gang, Gucci Gang, Gucci Gang, Gucci Gang. Yeah, yeah. I was teaching piano lessons to a college student, and we got into a discussion of, you know, what do people of his generation sort of respond to in the music of people

like little pump, little Zan, XXX, X, X, X, X, X, X, X, Tentation. Like, because I think for us, it's like, like, we were saying earlier, there's a certain distance we have where we're like, oh, this is interesting, but I don't know if I really understand it on a visceral level. And he was saying, you know, a lot of the violence and the darkness in this music is actually sort of comforting for members of his generation who feel like they live in a very violent world, a very dangerous world, a world in which they can go to school and not know if they're going to make it home

because there could be a shooting in which their, you know, suicide is rampant among not only, you know, the artists themselves that they listen to, but their peer group. That was a really shocking but also powerful moment for me where I realized, like, what to me is like a kind of overwhelming darkness in this is actually maybe a sort of a source of comfort and sucker

in a way for these listeners. Yeah. And particularly something that stuck out to me about that story was that when I heard Gucci Gang, I was like, this is a stupid song about conspicuous consumption, which isn't to say it's not, but it's got a very silly lyric. I didn't emotionally connect to it.

And yet, the production, especially the predominance of trap music currently, it often feels like, even if the lyric is about conspicuous consumption, say, the sound of the music is almost like the monster running to catch up after you. You have these sub-bases, and the hi-hats.

It's almost like there's a horror movie monster chasing after you is the production. And the lyric is... It tends towards minor keys for the most part. Yeah. And then the lyric is like the distraction of all the things that we pay attention to to stay, keep ourselves alive and happy despite the monstrosity that's behind us. Right, right. Okay, I'm with you.

Billy tackles, I think, one of the hardest realities of this that the next generation is constantly concerned about. which is climate. Huh. Hills burn in California. My turn to ignore you. Don't say I didn't want you. All the good girls go to hell. Because even got herself. Yeah.

Once the water starts to ride. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, the hills are burning in California. And you and I both live in Los Angeles. And we watched basically the city on fire. There was smoke everywhere. You could see fire on this on the skyline. It was absolutely. Oh my God. Ash, ash in the air. It was really, yeah. Yeah. It's very upsetting. Yeah.

Billy lives not far away and is experiencing the same thing as a young person. And she and her song, All Good Girls Go to Hell takes on a sort of biblical apocalyptic imagery in which she flips the script and basically says that, you know, when things go wrong, even God herself is going to need a friend, her friend Lucifer to hang out with. but in using the imagery of the oceans rising, like in Noah's Ark, and the hills burning, like in revelations, I think she's just talking about the legitimate fears of any studied, anyone who's paying attention

and as a young person is concerned about what is this world going to be? Oh my God. Yeah, no, it's wild. I mean, it's so interesting because in some ways to confront something that already keeps me up at night in pop music, I'm like, oh, I don't want to listen to that.

On the other hand, Yeah, it's kind of powerful to hear that actually manifested rather than swept under the carpet. Totally. Yeah. So I'm hearing like she's different because she's not conforming to normal expectations of feminine pop stardom. She has a somewhat nihilistic approach to her music that we hear from other artists of other decades. But she's also confronting the issues of today, issues of suicide and climate change. And I think that Billy musically does deserve this crown of tackling different. issues, sounding different to this young generation, speaking to what matters to them, and being the superstar, the superhero who represents a new generation. Right. So maybe on the

superhero spectrum, more like Rogue from X-Men than Wonder Woman. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Actually, similar hairstyle to Rogue, too, now they think of it. Yeah, multicolored. You know, I think we've focused a lot on the question of her message. her identity, the things that, the ways which are maybe more obvious in ways that Billy stands out. But I want to go deeper into her musicality. Always. And I think there's no better place to start than in her own words. In a conversation recently with The New York Times, she was asked about what kind of music does she want to make?

I don't want to be in the pop world. I don't want to be in the alternative world or the hip-hop world or the R&B world or whatever I think. You know, I want it to be like, what kind of music you listen to? Billy Island kind of music, you know, like the other kind. How about that? She wants to be the other kind of music. Okay, I'm into it, yeah.

And when we listen to her first song, you should see me in a crown. I said, hey, I'm hearing trap. I'm hearing pop. I'm hearing songwriter. I'm hearing dubstep. And I think this is what's interesting about her music is that she's not rejecting what's come before. She's just assimilating all of these different sounds.

Sometimes you'll get a whole trap section, which is just a bridge. And then you're going to get almost like a house beat in other parts. And all these genres become almost more like little parts of her arrangement. They're subservient to whatever the song needs. I do get the sense listening to this that there's a sort of enjoyable disorientation where you're like, wait, what am I? What genre am I in? And you can't answer.

But that just makes you want to listen more, I think. Nate, what's in your pocket right now? Oh, my jazz pocket. Your jazz pocket. I want to open up that jazz pocket because jazz is a whole other direction that somehow ends up in her music as well. She has some very harmonically rich and interesting stuff going on. And I want to go into one song a little more deeply. I want to talk about my favorite song on the album.

It's called Zanny. What is it about them? I must be missing something. They just keep doing nothing. Too intoxicated. To be scared. Butter off without them. They're nothing but unstable.

Bring as trays to the table. Maybe it's subtle right now, but we have, you know, we've got an upright bass sound. We've got some, uh, some symbol work sounds a little jazzy. and most of all her voice, it's, this is, this is the thing that, like, when I heard this song, I was like, oh, you're just, like, it's a crooner, right?

Totally, yeah. Right? It's not like she's just whispering and, like, being cool. It's actually, she's in a whole style that has been around for many decades. And I was like, you know what? This is just, like, reminds me of, like,

I don't know, we could, like, we could listen to Billy Holiday or, for some reason, this one reminded me of a Sinatra song. Ooh, okay, which Sinatra? Dream a dream. I dim all the and I sink in my chair. The smoke from my cigarette climbs through the air. The walls of my room fade away in the blue

and I'm deep in a dream of you. Smoke actually plays a central character in both songs. In one, they are the protagonist in Sinatra and in Billy, they are the antagonist. It's very imagistic. You feel like you're in Billy's song, you feel like you're in a diner with her friends, and in the Sinatra, you feel like you're lounging at home in the living room after a hard day's work, but you can picture it. And part of that, I think, is the, obviously, the intimacy.

They're singing at such a low volume using mic technique that actually really the crooners were known for sounding so different because they took advantage of being of microphone technology. They could sing quietly and yet still have an orchestra behind them, something that was never available before. And similarly with Billy, here the song starts, you know, very quietly, but surprise, surprise, the dynamics are going to increase. and somehow you can have whispers and you can have 808 beats. Totally. It was really exciting to listen to this song because I was like, oh, wow, this is out of another era. But then, of course, the section you didn't play the chorus of this song is a total 180 from that sound as well. Let's go there.

To feel better. Jazz. Right. And then all of a sudden it becomes this kind of like loping rock song. It's really, I love, they just go, she and Phineas just go in like any direction they please. And it always works because the conviction in her voice, I think, ties everything together. Absolutely. The voice does it. And as I was saying before, I feel like there's this genre bending that is always serving what the song needs. So here, if we think about, what's Zanny about?

Well, it's kind of like an anti-drug PSA in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the verse, you basically, she's hanging out with a book. bunch of friends that are getting high and they're bringing out their ash trays and going to smoke their cigarettes. And you're not really sure if she's going to like join the crowd from pure pressure. Right, right. And then in the chorus, you get, she's just like in this, almost like the drugged out state of their friends is that heavy 808 base. And her voice is distorting. It's a great example of text painting, right? When she says, I don't need a zunny, which is a force. Xanax to feel better.

She's just, she's fine drinking canned Coke. Like, she's like, she doesn't need another kind. Yeah, canned, exactly. She is content to find her own happiness in her own ways. And I love, I think the genre bending serves the larger text, the text painting within the song. Like, you need that zanny section to be dark and heavy and manipulated. And the other section feels introspective and personal.

in the verse, kind of like the sinatra. Right, but it's also probably part of that sort of ironic tongue-and-cheek distance you were talking about earlier, where she's taking the conventions of jazz, a music associated with smoky nightclubs and drug abuse, and then kind of flipping that on its head. Yeah. Wait, can we talk about the drums in that verse, too? Because that is such a classic sound of jazz, what's known. as brushes on a snare drum where you're literally not playing with drumsticks but playing with

these wire brushes and you can create that distinctive sh sh shh that like sweeping sound over the snare that is like such a characteristic sound and like you say something that's surprising to hear in a 2019 pop track right but it's there for a good reason it's there to create this ironic friction with the smoky sound of jazz and the anti-drug message of the song. Yep. Wow. Fun stuff, man.

Billy, wow, Billy, coming correct. All throughout her music, I think you put it correctly. We are known on our show for sometimes maybe extending our analysis beyond the intention of the artist, which I think we both feel very comfortable in doing so because music is about

the musical relationship of the listeners as much as it is about the intentions of the artist. That said, on this album, the intentionality of the sounds is remarkable. There's this line in another one of her songs where she says, I'm up all night

on another red eye. She's flying around the world and also like her eyes are red from crying and underneath that she has this safety demonstration from an actual flight followed by the taking off of a plane but the taking off of the plane

is used to sound like a riser in an EDM track to move into the next section. And you're like, oh, dang, all these found sounds that exist within her music, they have her braces coming out. There's an easy-bake oven sound. There's all of these sounds that they put in there to evoke.

Sometimes it's like horror-like sounds. Other times it's to just reinforce the emotional state. Everything feels sort of uniquely deliberate and the choices in the sound design. I see. So it's not a case of us over interpreting, like, these clues are sprinkled throughout the record for listeners to come find.

There's only one way for us to know, which is to talk with the producer who put all of these sounds together. So when we come back, we're going to talk with Phineas O'Connell, the producer and co-writer of all of Billy's music, also her brother. Maria, you have a podcast now

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I had the chance to sit down with Phineas during his rehearsals for Billy's World Tour. And I wanted to specifically look at how he and Billy thought about crafting their sound and their characters in one particular song, Bad Guy. It seems to be a hodgepodge of genres. It doesn't really even have a chorus, and yet the song is an absolute smash. And I wanted to know how Phineas thinks about putting these sounds together to be so different and yet so catchy. Here's Phineas on what inspired Bad Guy. Calling yourself the bad guy, like, oh, you've made yourself the bad guy.

That's like the phrase that comes to mind, which is like you've done the thing that like is inexcusable somehow or is sort of like trumps the other person in your nefariousness. You know I am the bad guy. And I loved that it was sung by a 16 year old girl. How did a bad guy come about? Billy had made this sort of crazy distorted trap beat in her bedroom. That was actually, it ended up being the outro of the song. and had written that really cool verse. I like when you get mad.

I guess I'm pretty glad that you're alone. You said she scared to me? I mean, I don't see what she sees, but maybe it's because I'm wearing your cologne. So when we were messing around with the sort of the beat and the base idea of what became the beginning of the song Bad Guy. And we decided that it would probably be a song called Bad Guy. We were like, oh my God, that thing that we didn't really know what it was,

it was, that has to be like the outro of this song. And I think then it was just sort of a question of like building that kind of concept and the character of, you know, what we were trying to say about like Billy being the bad guy in that song and what like saying you're the bad guy is. Okay, so you start with the outro and then you move into what comes next. Started with the outro and then sort of didn't abandon it but sort of put it on hold, put it on the back burner for a long time and then had this just this four on the floor, kick drum. and then this bass layered over it.

B'an-na-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-na, which just already, I was like, I already want to like do something to this. And then the next component was like in order to try to come up with like the rhythm and melody of the vocal, I was just playing the chords on the piano, which is like a 1-35 of like a G minor chord. And then instead of sort of like coming up with the different melody than that, I thought, oh, the melody, the sort of components of the melody is that it's all three of those pitches at once. It's this like cluster harmony and the rhythm is really staccato. And that those aren't really shifting.

It's the chords underneath that and they're shifting. I thought that would be really just fun to listen to. There's never a chord in that song. It's only bass and her vocal which makes chords. It's all just sort of monophonic patterns except for her voice, which is chordal. So there's this bad guy character which is tending towards the minor, yet the song has a certain irreverence to it. Yeah. The song, you know, the song's pretty tongue and cheek, and I think that nothing seems kind of

more ridiculous than having no sense of humor about something. Like if you're just being serious and dramatic and humorless in your music, especially if you're trying to seem like evil in any sense, like it's just so like heavy-handed and pretentious that I think the only times we've ever gotten really serious in our music are like love songs or like songs about the loss of somebody. But yeah, and this song especially, we were like, it's way fun. I mean, every great villain in every movie is funny. Because otherwise, they would be so uncharismatic. Like, an uncharismatic villain is, like, sort of worthless in storytelling.

You have to have a villain that has some level of charisma, which sometimes is even like a cool outfit. Villains always have the coolest lightsaber. But, yeah, I think funny villains, that's like, that's my. And that's also like even if you go back to like kids movies the villains are often like very funny and so I think we wanted to have a villain that was like funnier than the protagonists. I think the most villainous thing that you do in the song is that you killed the chorus. I'm the bad guy Yeah, yeah and then the duh was like you know, I think we were just like well duh, I think I don't I don't I think it took a couple takes to get a duh that we didn't think was contrived either we were like it's like there's things like a breath and like saying saying stuff like duh like where you

think it's going to be the easiest thing to do in the world and then you do it and you're like wait wait wait I have to do that again because you're like you've never like heard yourself say it and then like like when you're sort of acting you have to like rec like circle back to like how it would sound if you were just like throwing it away which like if you said duh to something like it would be a throw away you'd be like on your computer and someone to ask you across you be like, duh. And so I think like when you like go to record it and the beat drops and you're just like, duh, like it's this very like just sort of comical thing that Billy was like,

that's lame. I want to like really just like make it sound like, you know, this kind of like shoulder shrug. The song to me is almost like it's almost like the Joker. It's got a sense of humor in that way. Yeah, man. I mean like the Joker is the best example of like a funny villain and like a weird charismatic. I mean like you you care more about the Joker in the Dark Night than you care about Batman. Like you're like oh my god this dude is like just so fun to watch you know even

though he's like doing evil unspeakable stuff in those movies. I think that I think the song sort of borrows a lot of thematic elements from from movies like that. You take on these great characters and the thing that really astounds me about the song is the way in which you blend stylistic genres moving between I mean you've got gospel sounds. John Carpenter kick drum. You've got blues. It's all in there. And I think that taking on this character of the bad guy,

it feels like, again, this is sort of my interpretation of it, but I love that you sort of get rid of a section that I expect to be there. And you also throw in a trap beat that I don't expect to be there. Like, the bad guy is happening in the way the song is being written. That's cool, man.

I'm so glad that is the interpretation that you're taking from this. And I wish I was clever enough to think that when we made it. I was just like, yeah, I guess doesn't need a chorus. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I think the way that we deal with cross genre is that in our

time not writing and recording music, we're listening to everything. We're listening to all genres of music and new music and old music and then it all just sort of gets synthesized and boiled down into this sort of broth that we, you know, make. And I think very rarely are we

like pulling up a song when we are making a song to reference it. We're almost always just like, you know, like making it as it comes and any influence is sort of like subconscious, even though once we've recorded it, we go like, oh, this sounds like, you know, that, right? But it's all subconscious going in. And then when we listen back, we're like, oh, that's definitely where we can point to that as a reference. Do you think that collaborating outside of the typical song pop machine where it's just the two of you, does that give you more liberty to go across genre?

Yeah, probably. I think we come from a place, like, even though now we do, we are, we're friends with a lot of contemporary musicians that we admire and look up to. I think, like, looking at it as kind of outsiders, because we're still in, like, our childhood bedrooms, like, making music. There is a kind of a sense of, like, sort of, like, yeah, we're just going to make this today and drop it on SoundCloud. Like, this sort of, like, pirates thing. It's not even, like, rebelling against something. It's just, like, we're going to do it anyway. Like when we're in the creative process, we forget that we have a label that is promoting Billy's album ultimately.

We're just making it together, you know. And I think that sometimes when you're working with five people, it's impossible to forget that there's a whole world outside of you because you're all from different places. And when it's just the two of us and we're in like the bedroom we've been in for 12 years, it's like it's pretty easy to forget about everything else. When I was researching this piece, I wanted to talk to some younger people because I'm getting to the place of like aging out of pop music. And so I interviewed my cousins. And they all said the exact same thing. They said, I love Billy. She's so different.

And her music is so different. Do you like being different? Difference all you can be. I think, like, the first song we made that to me felt different was the third song we put out, which was the song, Belliache. To me, bellyache, although there are songs that it, you know, can be compared to, putting a regga tone beat with an acoustic guitar and then a bass drop was just like, I hadn't heard that done before, production-wise.

I hadn't heard a verse written about the things that we were writing about. I remember playing the song for friends of mine before it came out, and before anyone said anything that was like, nice, man, they all were like, I've never heard anything like that before. And that was like, I'd never had anyone say that to me about something I'd made before. And I was like, I want that feeling forever. I only want to make stuff that people are like, I've never heard anything like that before. That was like the most exciting thing about that song to me.

And so I've just been chasing that since then. How do you cultivate it? Trying to do something and then realizing that the thing that is on your way to trying to do that thing is more interesting and then going that way. if I hear a sound in my head, oftentimes it's like, I love the way the drums sound on that new light, John Mayer song, and I'll be working on drums, and they'll sound kind of halfway there, and I'll think, like, these are pretty sick. And then I go that direction, and I double down on that, and I go further that way. And by the end of it, I don't think anyone would, like, be able to tell what any sort of, like,

reference point is. And that's, like, true of, like, all my favorite songs. I think, like, if you are inspired by something and you try to do a little bit of it, and it sounds kind of like a mistake, like, if you double down on your mistake, do something different, like, stuff's really exciting. Oh, thanks, man. Thanks for having me. Switched on Pop is a production of Vox Media.

We're produced by Julianneberger, edited and engineered by Brandon McFarland. Our community manager is Sarah Terry, and our executive producers are Nashat Kerwa and Allison Rocky. You can find more episodes at Switched on Pop. dot com, the Apple Podcast app, Stitcher, anywhere you find podcasts, there we are. You can also reach out to us at contact at switchedonpop.com or Twitter and Instagram. We'll be back again in another week. And until them, thanks for listening.