I’ve been slow at trendy things, but have you heard TV by Billie Eilish? I just got to listen to it, and I am usually not the biggest Billie Eilish fan, not because there is anything wrong with her, but because she is just not my type of music, but this song is. Wtf?
I am so haunted by this song to the point where the lyrics hurt. Do you ever get this feeling? Where a certain lyric in a certain song depicts exactly an emotion, a feeling, a sense you have previously felt, and it gnaws your heart?
Every word she says, every guitar chord, it is chilling. It reminds me of why I am so scared of losing people, heartbreaks, and loving someone so much, only to see them leave after a little while.
The song seems like it is about a person leaving someone. She is in denial, preferring to watch TV, or drown in a pool, and not face the fact that he left. She is trying to distract herself by watching other people suffer, and is in remorse that she left all her friends because she was too in love to give them the attention her friends deserved.
And most of us do this, right?
When we love someone, we prioritize spending time with them instead of spending time with other people, and we begin to lose friends day by day because it is unfair and because they cannot really wait for us forever. And then after we break up, we get out of the bubble of sinful bliss we were in, and we notice that the world has turned cold and cruel, and that we lost the support system we had because we simply took it for granted.
In the second verse, she wonders if he saw her on TV, because we all adore when our partner sees us successful, so much so, we achieve just to show them our triumphs.
She mentions starving herself just because he’s mad at her. I feel like this is a statement that may upset feminists, but honestly, how many of us can relate? How many of us were too scared that we might have upset our lover, that we contemplated hurting ourselves to make it up? How many of us blamed ourselves for the mistakes made in our relationship and wished that we could’ve avoided them because it hurts so much when it [the relationship] is gone?
And then Billie wonders if the problem is her, because she doesn’t get along with anyone. She wonders if she’s the problem, over and over and over again. And then she realized, she is the problem.
I relate to every lyric, and every chorus, and even though I am not going through any of that right now, I know that I will eventually. And I know from now, this will be the ballad that helps me sleep at night.
Fyi, another song I find incredible is everything i wanted by Billie. It speaks about suicide and depression. It speaks volumes and has rocked me to sleep while lying on the floor of my old office, at my old job, trying to ease up a panic attack. But let’s keep this for another post.