Billie Eilish

She may be talented (like many other people are, but don't get that break)...but I too feel that her style of music, like so much of the "Modern Pop" (or maybe "Juvenile Pop" is better) that we've had the last 10-15 years...is highly disposable because the fan base tends to be very young, and because the fan base is way too trend and convenience focused.
What is hip today is boring tomorrow, as soon as the next new trend comes along...but it's now at a much more rapid rate than in past decades, due to the internet and social media.
All that "viral" nonsense is truly like a virus. It hits big...and then it's gone and generally forgotten.
Just consider the "Modern Pop" icons of the last 15 years....how quickly they have been pushed aside in favor of new ones.

IMO, much of it really has to do with the target age group...which is young girls, who grow up to be women, and they tend to want to discard that young girl stuff along the way, because even adult women are way too fashion/trend focused...and they are always looking for the next new trend.
Not trying to just stereotyped...but it's really pretty obvious. IMO...Eilish will be selling perfume and clothing 5 years from now, trying to ride the trend wave into adulthood.

Dude....hasn't it always been that way?

The parents around me hated the Beatles as being some goofball teenage noise....they wanted Benny Goodman and the Doresy Brothers BIG BAND.....
My uncles hated Elvis....as some jerky kid making noise and totally crap music compared to their Bluegrass!! lol

I find it so funny how old people can put down the youth music because we don't like it, but then turn around and defend Led Zepplin or some 80's hairspray goofball band in white and red striped spandex with guys wearing eye make up..or psychedelic Cream LSD bands singing INAGADDADAVIDA as real music.... lol

All I know is the Grammy Sweep and Bedroom production was interesting, and yeah the kids made me feel old as rust. …..their younger than my kids!!

I joke with my even older brother about keeping fresh.,...and start writing Billie & Finneas type techno pop rap grunge whatever it is music for Millenials?

Would Billies music sell if some fat old man with balding hair sang it?

She and Finneas did Yesterday to the old dead people on the Academy Awards show last night, it was ok, but at the same time it was visually like watching the Millenial say good-bye to the elders who are gone.
 
TAE they can do magic these days with cancer fighting. Ive seen it a few times at work and in the family recently, 10 to 20yrs and their still doing fine...it isn't easy at all though, from watching a close friend go through the early stages you talk about. Hang in there.
 
All I know is the Grammy Sweep and Bedroom production was interesting, and yeah the kids made me feel old as rust. …..their younger than my kids!!

Ha! My daughter and her husband just celebrated their 17th anniversary. Billie could have been my granddaughter!

As for Billie hooking up with Paul McCartney, nah, that's not going to happen. However I can see Carlos Santana doing some riffs! It worked with Rob Thomas, and Lauryn Hill, Gloria Estefan, Pitbull, etc.


Now, if you youngsters wouldn't mind getting off my lawn.......:D



And for TAE, hang in there. CC is right. Postitve attitude helps. I went through my cancer stuff 9 years ago, thankfully it wasn't as aggressive as yours sounds, but I know others who did beat more aggressive ones. They're doing some amazing stuff these days.
 
Dude....hasn't it always been that way?

Up to a point.
You're talking about the generational tastes in music...and the rifts between them.
I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about the style of Pop...what I call "Juvenile Pop" music. That's what you get from Eilish...and before her, Cyrus, Perry, etc...etc.
It's VERY disposable music...just a lot of sound design and/or fancy videos and choreography...with very simplistic or almost non-existent melodies, set to boring, repetitive beats and very monosyllabic, rhyming lyrics.

That said...there is also a lot of current, fresh and more "adult" (no, not in that sense ;) ) Pop/Rock music that is great. I listen to it all day long. Stuff that has some musical substance to it, with better songwriting, stronger lyrics, and people who actually play really well, rather than just trigger samples.
I'm not one of those guys stuck in the classic Rock '70s or whatever, if that's what you think.

Back in the day, we use to call it "Bubble Gum" music, and there was tons of it...and I never listened to that shit either, back when I was a young.
It's not just a "generational" thing for me.
 
5 years from now many of her fans will be laughing at themselves for liking this crap.
Many of them probably will. And many of them won't. None of us are spokespeople for any individual's future tastes. When I look at the above quote, what it really says to me is "I don't like this music !"
Back in the day {I think it was a Thursday;)} I begrudged the faceless masses that I couldn't possibly know liking artists or genres or songs that I didn't. Now I just don't care. Listening wise, I've been stuck in a groove for a long time and I'm more than content to remain there !


From a recording aspect.... many of us have been star-struck at the thought of our own home recordings hitting the big time ever since we heard that Tom Scholz recorded Boston's debut album in his basement.
Yeah, Boston's debut was definitely a ground mover in the concept of a home studio but its influence was more in the concept, I think. Many of the British albums recorded on the Rolling Stones' mobile truck {like Led Zep 3, 4 and bits of HOH and Grafitti} weren't recorded in state of the art rooms, even if the equipment was stellar. But that's kind of where Billie and her brother are sometimes at. Yes, they use samples like so many others that record at home, sometimes mixed in with actual instruments. I'm not a fan of her actual music but I am of her industry and hard work and creativity.

I'm not one of those guys stuck in the classic Rock '70s or whatever, if that's what you think.

Back in the day, we use to call it "Bubble Gum" music, and there was tons of it...and I never listened to that shit either, back when I was a young.
It's not just a "generational" thing for me.
I love what I love. At the moment I'm going through my singles ipod {I have different ones for various genres}, singles that range from the 50s to about 2013 ~ ish. There's hundreds of them and I'm seriously stuck on them, in addition to lots of other things. Because of the time I was born, I kind of loved a lot of bubblegum and all kinds of pop from the 60s and 70s while it was happening and before I was aware of what it was to be hip and what was considered hip, cutting edge etc. And I don't care, I love the music I love. I've noticed that in every era there's been stuff that could be described as
VERY disposable music...just a lot of sound design {and sometimes with fancy videos and choreography...} with very simplistic or almost non-existent melodies, set to boring, repetitive beats and very monosyllabic, rhyming lyrics
and some of them I consider great songs and some not. And there have been many many brilliantly crafted songs that I can't stand......
But the issue in the thread was about where these Billie songs were recorded. I think it goes almost without saying that with the kind of recording packages we've seen over the last 20 years, it is possible to create great songs in bedrooms. To me that's a different argument from the quality of much of the stuff one hears played. I tend to hear a lot of pop because I work with kids and my older son has wide tastes and it is very rare that I hear a song I really like. It's actually been that way since the 80s for me. My definition of a song I like is one that I'm actually prepared to go out and buy and keep till I shed this mortal coil.
 
Nah, Katy Perry has a bigger butt. Same back when it was Brittney Spears and Christina Aguliara. Christina had a bigger butt.
 
TAE, be strong. Cancer is really serious. I did nt want to look like an asshole in a cancer sympathy thread talking about womans butts.

I was 35 when I got the first Colon Cancer Dx. Everybody else got family, kids, I got a form of cancer. A bunch of surgeries fixed it. So far so good.

Be strong. Live. Survive. Fight.
 
Having a not so fun battle with an aggressive type of squamous skin cancer. Multiple surgeries radiation immunotherapy. More surgeries and going forward it looks like a game of whack a mole until there’s no more of me to whack. I definitely may hang for more than 5 years but with this shit there are no guarantees. At this moment their not saying get you affairs in order just that based upon what has gone down so far. It’s going to be an ongoing battle unless a cure pops up in the meantime. It could happen but what they thought would help me actually accelerated the dang stuff. Pretty scared up but overall Heath and energy are great and I’m totally grateful for what I have and am able to do. I’ll keep on keeping on till there’s nothing to keep.

You've got the right attitude, and that's half the battle. Both my sister and a friend of mine are cancer survivors and the will to fight and maintain a healthy mindset is HUGE with having cancer. An ex girlfriend of mine swears that mega-doses of Vitamin C helped her defeat her cancer. I don't know if there's anything to that, but some people (like her) absolutely swear by it. I had my own cancer scare recently and I have to go back to make sure there's nothing further developing. Anyway, below is a link about the Vitamin C thing. Note that it's actually a reputable source. Since reading this, I've gotten on a daily habit of around 5,000 percent of the daily allowance every morning along with my hypertention meds. This getting old thing is for the birds!!

High-Dose Vitamin C (PDQ(R))–Patient Version - National Cancer Institute
 
Back in the day, we use to call it "Bubble Gum" music, and there was tons of it...and I never listened to that shit either, back when I was a young.
It's not just a "generational" thing for me.

Exactly!

That's why All Along The Watchtower and Black Dog have stood the test of time, whereas, "Yummy Yummy Yummy I Got Love in My Tummy"... ummm, not so much.
 
All Along The Watchtower and Black Dog have stood the test of time, whereas, "Yummy Yummy Yummy I Got Love in My Tummy"... ummm, not so much
To whom though ? It's all subjective. Funnily enough, I was listening to "Yummy, yummy, yummy" last week. It's an OK song in parts. I've loved "Black Dog" for 40 years. I never get tired of it. But then, I've loved "Loved and lost" by Nazareth that I heard around the same time and no one talks about that either......
 
I took a friend to see Diana Krall. I could tell that it was completely out of her comfort zone. To her, jazz all sounds the same. The concerts that she likes the most are the "Happy Together" tours at the state fair. Give her some 3 Dog Night, some Turtles and put Mark Lindsey on the stage and she's a happy lady!

When we would carpool to work (50 mile trip), I has a special CD with 190 hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s and she would be singing along with most of the songs. It was like listening to the oldies channel and she loved it.

I'm guessing that in 40 years, there will be grandmas riding around with Billy Eilish, Taylor Swift, Kesha, Maroon 5, Ed Sheeran and Justin Beiber blasting out of the speakers of their self driving cars!
 
I'm guessing that in 40 years, there will be grandmas riding around with Billy Eilish, Taylor Swift, Kesha, Maroon 5, Ed Sheeran and Justin Beiber blasting out of the speakers of their self driving cars!

Nah, the future will be sound transmitted directly to your brain. Sound externally will be heavily fined as pollution. One design fires it direct through the eye with a mircowave range laser.

Amazons' preOrdering Appetite for Destruction from a phased array, at a 40 watt range.
 
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Wherever she's recording I'd be a lot more impressed if she had an outstanding voice - I haven't found any evidence that she does. She seems to go for a manic-depressive niche similar to Adele but with nothing like Adele's vocal chops.
 
I havent listened to her songs much but the James Bond tune is really good and her vocals are very good, FInneas showed he can write on order.

Agree, wouldnt put her at Adele's level either but also heard some similarity to adeles-pronunciations of some lines, raspy whisper parts.
Theres also the comparison that Adele was the one sweeping the Grammys years ago and still holds some top Billboard spots. Its likely we dont see them doing the sweep again, thats a one time thing I think.

One thing I do is look for unplugged stuff, like videos of an artist doing a radiio or podcast song and from what I saw on NYLON, her and Finneas are able to sound very good like Adele and her guitar player in "unplugged versions". The talent is there.

If some big movie company put a competition on Home Recording for $400,000 to the winner, and set one week to write and do a demo....
I doubt I could be at Billie and Finneas No Time to Die song level, or McCartneys Live and Let Die- Bond song...which I just saw a video on Amazon, where the drummer said he was there watching Paul write it and it took like 10 minutes or something. Finneas said it took No Time to Die 3 days.
Ive listened to that tune about 20 times and read about it. Id give it 5 stars for the Bond thing...is it the Best of all the Bond themes? I dont know.
 
It's a bit depressing, but I quite like it. However, it's fine to claim it was recorded in their bedroom because it's clearly a sample package product with a vocal over the top. In fact, I think I have some of those sounds in my system. It's not like they have to do much live recording is it?
 
It's not like they have to do much live recording is it?


It's songwriting not playing live that got her where she is...her strength is in her painting her thoughts with words and melodies...That many of the sounds and tracks are "canned" is true but she and her brother take those canned sounds and turn them into gold...That said she was playing the keys very proficiently at 12 in the video above so it's not like she's NOT a "real" musician...She's a very talented musician, singer, songwriter and performer...
 
At 12 she was doing this...but then again I'm easily impressed... :laughings:

OK...but you can hit YouTube and find hundreds of people doing the same thing, at that same, or even better level.
There's nothing really outstanding there, other than that she get the break...while the hundreds/thousands of others still have not, and may never.

That's what modern music is about...getting the big machine behind you, and then you're the "phenomenon".

I never thought that Lady Gaga was anything special...she can sing pretty good, and the rest was ALL image and focused marketing of it.
Same thing with many other Pop stars...but that's how the system works...every couple of years the music industry kicks out a new fashion trend.

I've been listening to a local, and somewhat "underground" station...kinda like college radio, but not as rough around the edges...and the high quality of music and songs that will hardly EVER get the same exposure as some new Pop star, is astounding...but that's how it is.
 
OK...but you can hit YouTube and find hundreds of people doing the same thing, at that same, or even better level.
There's nothing really outstanding there, other than that she get the break...while the hundreds/thousands of others still have not, and may never

I would say that Alma Deutscher is many times more talented than Billie Eilish.

She hasn't won any Grammys, but she did manage to play with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, among others, and sold out Carnegie Hall, playing her own compositions. Not too bad of a resume for a 15 yr old.

That's the nature of pop music vs many other forms.
 
Yesterday, I had our monthly lunch with the 'Old Gits' an invitation group where to be in it you have to be a musician, over 55 or so, and like food. Sitting around that table are people who have made music their career. It's paid mortgages, looks after the kids, and been a great thing to have been. We all live within 50 miles of each other. Some have worked together, but most just move in small circles with the same friends - a bit like on Facebook. We always reminisce about this and that and the clear fact with musicians is that having chart success and even lots of money has very little to do with how talented we are. Watching TV interviews with Billie and her brother suggest a proper, sound musical background and that shouldn't be taken away from them - but their James Bond track is just following in the wake of so many others. I've not heard anything else they have produced, so I'm basing my comments purely on this - my first Billie Eilish track. It's nice - but by today, I've forgotten the tune and the chord progressions. So memorable, it isn't - unlike so many of the others where something in it clicks. Even Skyfall, one of similar ilk to this one has those unusual intervals that rise in true bond fashion in the Skyfall phrase section. Very memorable even if you don't like Adele. This is just one of the more forgettable ones. It will of course do amazingly well - but that has not too much to do with being a good track. The true star of all these tunes is the 5th, sharpened 5th and then 6th sequence. I can't think of any other musical motif that has been used so often, but in so many different genres.

I made a few quid from track versions of Skyfall for shows, but I doubt I'll get asked to do this one.
 
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