Billie Eilish: When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? review

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With her DIY album, Billie Eilish became the youngest ever female solo Artist to score a UK Number One album.

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Seventeen-year-old Billie Eilish released her entrancing, off-kilter album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? on March 29th, and met with hugely assured plaudits.

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Rather than a music album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? feels more like a confessional diary that contains the daydreams and nightmares of a 21st-century teenage girl. The intro of the album is "!!!!!!!," which is simply a 14 second audio of the sound made as Eilish is taking her Invisalign (a kind of clear braces) out. She explains that this procedure had already become an everyday routine when she was working on this album, and "having this recorded as the intro really makes us remember the time that we made the whole album."

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Like her previous hit, "Ocean Eyes," this album was recorded with the help of her older brother Finneas in their family home in Los Angeles. "I sit on the edge of my bed, and record, with a mic, right in front of me. That's how I record this whole album," said Eilish. Though the process of producing this album seems not that complicated, Eilish poses a serious, personal, and complex question to people, and herself: When we all fall asleep, where do we go?

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In the song "Bad Guy", a slinky, glossy pop track with a sense of choral electronic strangeness, Eilish explores the answer to that question and shows that for her, it represents the symbolic opportunity to try on a new, and perhaps more honest, persona. She writes herself into a character who toes the line between good and bad. She recalls DC Comics ass-kicker Harley Quinn playing a villain in cartoons: "I’m a make-your-momma-sad type, make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type," she boasts -- and with a short, sardonic "Duh," she narrowly gets away with it.

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Through her sweet, soft, and lilting voice, Eilish reveals her fascinating ambition in "You Should See Me In a Crown," with an ego boost and acknowledgment of her newfound celebrity status in pop culture. "There will always be copycats," said Eilish, "but none will be me." Billie Eilish and her music have become a world-renowned phenomenon among teenagers. There is a long and bright future towards this seventeen-year-old, let's just wait and see how she's going to change the modern pop culture.