Power

How dare you?

And how could you?

Will you only feel bad when they find out?

If you could take it all back

Would you?

Billie Eillish is 19. I know. Time flies. She has literally grown under the watchful eye of the world. A world that has not been kind of other girls and young women growing up under its relentless eye. Billie has been very successful in her short career (she blew up at thirteen after she uploaded a song online for one of her teachers) and now has more than forty million subscribers to her YouTube channel, more than 83 million followers on Instagram and five million on Twitter. Not bad for a nineteen year old who has lived all her life in the new millenium. 

I like Billie's music. I have both her Don't Smile at Me EP (I love Bellyache!) and her When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? album (Good Girls Go To Hell is my fav there). And now her official second record is coming out this Summer and will probably buy that one, too. It's funny, because I don't really buy a ton of music. I can count the albums from current artists that I've bought in the last five years, because I mainly buy music on vinyl. But I think I'll make another exception with this new record.

When artists grow up in front of the public, it's sometimes hard for them to get people to understand that they cannot be children or teens forever. I think Billie is taking the opportunity of releasing this album to tell the world that. The first single, Your Power, is a deceptively mellow song. The punch comes with the lyrics, of course. As most of Billie's songs, written by her or with her Brother Finneas, this one sounds wise beyond her years. It reminded me of Hands Clean, by Alanis. And Billie says that she wrote it after she observed how things worked in the music industry for women.

It's a call Billie makes to men (because it's usually men) who abuse their power and the consequences that has on them and the women they abuse. Told you it was deceptively mellow. Did you know that most women have been accosted by men at one time in their lives? That a high number of women have felt the need to fist their car keys when walking across a parking lot? Did you know that many women have had to learn to be en garde since they're teenagers? 

This time around, gone are the super baggy clothes that hid her from the prying eyes of a public that usually tears women apart using the way they look as a weapon. She's taken a step that many female artists have had to take before: establishing themselves as young women in charge of their own selves. It's going to come as a shock for some people used to seeing her bopping on a stage in knee-lenght shorts and baggy tops. Billie has become an Avatar for many a woman and young women all over. Her struggles with body positivity (who hasn't felt that?) have made her a somehow reluctant voice for many, when she has directly addressed the haters that have tried to come for her when it was obvious she was not a little girl anymore. 

I like this 'new' Billie. She's still the artist I've liked for years, right? The fact that the black and lime green hair is gone and the clothes may have changed does not change the fact that I like her music. I'm looking forward to listening to this album. And when it comes out, I'll make sure I get it to play it while driving with the windows down this summer.

XOXO

P.S. She's really letting them HAVE it with this 'new' image.