Billie Eilish: The Philosophy Of An Outsider

19 min read

How a mainstream artist is expressing what many of us feel deep down in our darkest moments.

It’s strange that someone like Billie Eilish became so immensely popular. Don’t get me wrong, she has talent, but I’m more surprised of how unorthodox she really is for a mainstream singer. Her lyrics are dark, her mood is melancholic, brooding, and even nihilistic at times. But if you’ve paid attention to what is psychologically repressed in our modern age, then it all makes sense.

Our age presents itself as “the greatest time to be alive” — so many high-tech devices and so many good TV shows and travelling is more accessible than ever etc. Yet, if you look at the statistics, depression rates are the highest in recorded history and suicide rates are only going up in developed countries. How could that be? Here in the West, we seem to have it all, and yet we are so miserable.

Why? I think it’s because we’re not allowed to be sad. We’re not allowed to acknowledge that our life is meaningless at times, because how could that be? We have it all, don’t we? We’re living the capitalist dream in which we are materially self-sufficient, so how dare we be sad? Look at those African kids, dying of hunger, they are sad! You? How dare you be sad?!

The problem is, when we’re materially self-sufficient and we have so much abundance, we’ve nothing else to strive for — and people need something to strive for or else they suffocate spiritually. It’s in our biology. We need a North Star to follow, but that North Star is nowhere to be seen, it seems.

According to the “World Happiness Report”, Finland is “the happiest country in the world”. How did they measure that? By taking into account mostly material things: “real GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption.”

Suicide rates in Finland are half what they were in the 1990s and have reduced across all age groups — a shift which has been linked to a nationwide suicide prevention campaign when things were at their worst, alongside improved treatment for depression.

Yet, a shocking statistic contradicts this. BBC reports in an article:

But they [suicide rates] remain well above the European average. One third of all deaths among 15- to 24-year-olds are caused by suicide. According to a 2018 report, In the Shadow of Happiness, authored by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, some 16% of Finnish women aged 18 to 23 and 11% of young men define themselves as “struggling” or “suffering” in life. This level is only worse in the age bracket of 80 or above.

“You almost feel like you don’t have the right to be depressed when you’re living in a country like Finland where the living standard is so high,” explains Kirsi-Marja Moberg, now 34, who was first diagnosed with depression as a teenager and struggled with the illness throughout her twenties.

“You feel really like you should be just enjoying yourself and all the possibilities that you have when you’re still young. And also the society can really give you this kind of image.”

“In Finland… you feel that everything should be alright, even though it’s not,” agrees Jonne Juntura, a 27-year-old junior doctor who was depressed for six months during his university studies.

He points out that while difficult personal and societal events are often linked to depression — for example, break-ups or a recession — it is an illness that can affect people regardless of their standard of living.

“Even though we’re the happiest country in the world according to the statistics, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Because depression is a disease and it doesn’t always relate to circumstances.”

“The moment I personally fell ill, everything was fine with my life. I was really enjoying my school. I loved my hobbies. I was in a relationship. So there was nothing dramatically wrong with my life. But still, I fell ill,” he explains.

Another article, from Scientific American, reports on the same issue:

In one comparison made by the World Health Organization, the per capita prevalence of unipolar depressive disorders is highest in the world in the United States. Among Western countries, Finland is number two. Paradoxically then, the same country can be high on both life satisfaction and depression. While there are significant shortcomings in international comparisons of depression and while other research has estimated that the depression rates of Finland would be closer to the global average, what is clear is that Finland is far from the top of the world in preventing depression.

So while Finland might be good at keeping the average life satisfaction levels high, those at risk for depression might not get enough social support to cope with their low mood. Maybe that’s why Finland has the highest number of heavy metal bands per capita in the world.

So there it is — materially well-off, yet spiritually depressed. Americans are the most depressed per capita — not good news, but at least Amazon can bring you that new toy right at your door! YAS! High-five, Bezos!

Well, at least the Finns have lots of heavy metal bands, right? But I wouldn’t even call it heavy metal, their bands are closer to death metal, which would imply a lot of heavy booze (probably vodka), destroyed vocal chords, awkward conversations in saunas, suppressed rage and sadness (You know, the word “death” in it, ring any bells?)

Thus, I think the resurgence of artists like Billie Eilish is a normal thing considering the cultural malaise and spiritual nihilism we’re experiencing right now. Her music is a vessel through which we can understand our individual and cultural psychosis. She acts as a cathartic experience — we decompress by listening to her darkness, because we see it reflecting in ourselves — at last, a mainstream singer is expressing what many of us really feel deep down in our darkest moments! That darkness need not be suppressed if we want to accept it and let it pass. That darkness needs to be portrayed, otherwise we may implode.

In this article I’ll try to elaborate on this idea by studying some of her lyrics and some philosophical motifs that came to mind when I was listening to her music.

1) bury a friend

“What do you want from me? Why don’t you run from me?

What are you wondering? What do you know?

Why aren’t you scared of me? Why do you care for me?

When we all fall asleep, where do we go?”

The lyrics website Genius.com said the following about the song,

“bury a friend” is written from the perspective of Billie Eilish’s monster under her bed. The track details a confusing relationship with this ‘entity’ and ambiguously sets her up to be the monster itself.

I will now expand on this idea.

Carl Jung and “the realization of the shadow”

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung’s work was influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, and religious studies.

Towards the end of his life, the famous psychologist, Carl Jung, co-wrote and edited a book called “Man And His Symbols (1964)” with a few of his associates — it was a work directed towards the general reader and it summarized some of his most profound findings about the human psyche throughout his psycho-therapeutic practice.

In this book, he talks about “the process of individuation” — developing your personality. He says that our childhood years are crucial to how that development will take place in the next few decades.

“Childhood is a period of great emotional intensity, and a child’s earliest dreams often manifest in symbolic form the basic structure of the psyche, indicating how it will later shape the destiny of the individual concerned.”

Jung argues that, naturally, different children will have different experiences, but one thing they will all have in common are “painful shocks” — which occur when they become conscious of “the imperfections of the world and the evil within ourselves”.

As the lyrics from “bury a friend” go, “Today, I’m thinkin’ about the things that are deadly”

In Jung’s words,

“When a child reaches school age, the phase of building up the ego and of adapting to the outer world begins. This phase generally brings a number of painful shocks. At the same time, some children begin to feel very different from others, and this feeling of being unique brings a certain sadness that is part of the loneliness of many youngsters. The imperfections of the world, and the evil within oneself as well as outside, become conscious problems; the child must try to cope with urgent (but not yet understood) inner impulses as well as the demands of the outer world.”

Jung further argues that there are many children in this early phase who “earnestly seek for some meaning in life that could help them to deal with the chaos both within and outside themselves.”

“What do you want from me? Why don’t you run from me?

What are you wondering? What do you know?

Why aren’t you scared of me? Why do you care for me?

When we all fall asleep, where do we go?”

In the music video to “bury a friend”, Billie is violently thrown and held around by “unknown” arms, and at one point she even has multiple needles stuck in her back, thus inflicting physical pain and “shocking” her.

Jung explains the meaning of those “painful shocks” he mentioned earlier,

“The actual processes of individuation — the conscious coming-to-terms with one’s own inner center or Self — generally begins with a wounding of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it. This initial shock amounts to a sort of ‘call’, although it is not often recognized as such. On the contrary, the ego feels hampered in its will or its desire and usually projects the obstruction onto something external…Or perhaps everything seems outwardly alright, but beneath the surface a person is suffering from a deadly boredom that makes everything seem meaningless and empty.”

He then expands on this idea by mentioning how many myths and fairy tales use symbolism to describe this initial stage in “the process of individuation” by telling of kings who had fallen ill and grown old or that “a monster steals all the women and children” or that “darkness hangs over the lands”.

Jung calls this darkness “the shadow”.

He explains,

“Thus it seems as if the initial encounter with the Self casts a dark shadow ahead of time, or as if the “inner friend” comes at first like a trapper to catch the helplessly struggling ego in his snare”

“Bury a friend, try to wake up (ah ahh)

Cannibal class, killing the son (ahh)”

Jung continues,

“One is seeking something that is impossible to find or about which nothing is known. In such moments all well-meant, sensible advice is completely useless — advice that urges one to try to be responsible, to take a holiday, not to work so hard (or to work harder), to have more (or less) human contact, or to take up a hobby. None of that helps, or at best only rarely. There is only one thing that seems to work; and that is to turn directly toward the approaching darkness without prejudice and totally naively, and to try to find out what its secret aim is and what it wants from you.”

“What do you want from me? Why don’t you run from me?

What are you wondering? What do you know?

But this process of “turning directly toward the approaching darkness” may not reveal what we’re seeking for — it may reveal something very unpleasant about us.

Jung says,

“The hidden purpose of oncoming darkness is generally something so unusual, so unique and unexpected, that as a rule one can find out what it is only by means of dreams and fantasies welling up from the unconscious. I one focuses attention on the unconscious without rash assumptions or emotional rejection, it often breaks through in a flow of helpful symbolic images. But not always. Sometimes it first offers a series of painful realizations of what is wrong with oneself and one’s conscious attitudes. Then one must begin the process by swallowing all sorts of bitter truths.”

These “painful realizations” may lead to self-hate, at least for a while.

In Billie’s words,

“Say it, spit it out, what is it exactly

You’re payin’? Is the amount cleanin’ you out, am I satisfactory?

Today, I’m thinkin’ about the things that are deadly

The way I’m drinkin’ you down

Like I wanna drown, like I wanna end me”

In order to grow, we need to accept the criticism from the unconscious, argues Jung.

“Whether the unconscious comes up at first in a helpful or a negative form, after a time the need usually arises to re-adapt the conscious attitude in a better way to the unconscious factors — therefore to accept what seems to be ‘criticism’ from the unconscious. Through dreams one becomes acquainted with aspects of one’s own personality that for various reasons one has preferred not to look at too closely”

This is what Jung called “the realization of the shadow”.

He further explains,

“The shadow is not the whole of the unconscious personality. It represents unknown or little-known attributes and qualities of the ego — aspects that mostly belong to the personal sphere and that could as well be conscious…

…When and individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in other people — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions — in short, all the little sins about which he might previously have told himself: ‘That doesn’t matter; nobody will notice it, and in any case other people do it too.’

If you feel an overwhelming rage coming up in you when a friend reproaches you about a fault, you can be fairly sure that at this point you will find a part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious. It is, of course, natural to become annoyed when others who are ‘no better’ criticize you because of shadow faults. But what can you say if your own dreams — an inner judge in your own being — reproach you? That is the moment when the ego gets caught, and the result is usually embarrassed silence. Afterward the painful and lengthy work of self-education begins…

…The shadow does not consist only of omissions. It shows up just as often in an impulsive or inadvertent act. Before one has time to think, the evil remark pops out, the plot is hatched, the wrong decision is made, and one is confronted with results that were never intended or consciously wanted.”

Billie reflects on similar feelings in her lyrics,

“Your talk’ll be somethin’ that shouldn’t be said out loud

Honestly, I thought that I would be dead by now

Calling security, keepin’ my head held down

Bury the hatchet or bury your friend right now

Bury a friend, try to wake up (ah ahh)

Cannibal class, killing the son (ahh)”

Jung argues that after those shocks “the painful and lengthy work of self-education begins”. But, as in most things concerning our brains, it’s not that easy.

“The shadow usually contains values that are needed by consciousness, but that exist in a form that makes it difficult to integrate them into one’s life.”

“Keep you in the dark, what had you expected?

Me to make you my art and make you a star

And get you connected?”

The shadow is mostly repressed and unknown to you, but being aware of its existence and trying to understand it will hopefully make you more empathetic towards yourself. Understanding your own psyche is a life-long project, but what else can you do really? I think that the alternative — lying to yourself — is much, much worse.

As Dostoyevsky once said,

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

And as Carl Jung concluded,

“Whether the shadow becomes our friend or enemy depends largely upon ourselves…The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood.”

2) everything I wanted

I had a dream

I got everything I wanted

Not what you’d think

And if I’m being honest

It might’ve been a nightmare

To anyone who might care

Thought I could fly

So I stepped off the golden, mm

Nobody cried

Nobody even noticed

I saw them standing right there

Kinda thought they might care

Billie commented on these lyrics:

Pretty much that whole song is about me and Finneas’ relationship as siblings. We started writing it because I literally had a dream that I killed myself and nobody cared and all of my best friends and people that I worked with basically came out in public and said, like, ‘Oh, we never liked her.’ In the dream, the fans didn’t care. The internet shit on me for killing myself, all this stuff, and it really did mess me up.

This one is more straightforward to explain. It seems like Billie reflects on her music career, her immense popularity, her intense self-doubt (implied in her dream) and if it’s all worth it in the end. I know it’s a cliché, but becoming so popular at such an early age has to take a toll on your mental health — there’s no other way around it. But some people do just fine and embrace this sudden fame.

Others, more often than not, can never really get accustomed to it. There are many such examples.

Keanu Reeves is one that comes to mind. He’s clearly a huge introvert and doesn’t like the whole attention he’s getting, constantly changing topics when being complemented by people.

He commented on his fame in a recent interview:

“I’ll come out in the morning and get my newspaper [and they’re there]. You feel like an animal in a cage. They visit everyone’s homes and sit outside. They look at you like: ‘There’s One!’ And I get it. But walking around LA, no one cares pretty much.”

Bill Murray is another example of someone who doesn’t like fame. He said in an interview in 1988:

“I realize it’s impossible to have any sympathy, I mean, true sympathy, for people that are famous. People usually go through a bad period when they first get successful. You’re new and you’re hot and things go wrong. So you’re not used to all the attention, people treat you differently, and what happens is you start taking that seriously and then you start becoming an ass and then they treat you like an ass…

… On Ghostbusters they had somebody following us. Following us. You walk down the street, you turn around and somebody would duck into a doorway. Just to control us and make sure we didn’t do anything too weird. It’s like, ‘what the hell.’ I didn’t get into this position by being like a stiff sitting on the set in a folding chair. I did it by walking around on the streets and stirring things up.”

Eilish laments in her song,

“I tried to scream

But my head was underwater

They called me weak

Like I’m not just somebody’s daughter

…

If I knew it all then would I do it again?

Would I do it again?”

Nietzsche and “Eternal Reccurrence“

In his book, “Gay Science”, written in 1882, the famous German philosopher presents a sort of thought experiment, a test of one’s attitude toward life. He calls it “eternal recurrence”. It appears in Aphorism 341, “The Greatest Weight”:

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’ If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, ‘Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?’ would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life?”

“Eternal return of the same” from the movie “Arrival”

Nietzsche’s philosophy is mostly about action and free will. His idea of eternal recurrence is not literal, rather, it’s a though experiment which would make us ask ourselves the following question:

What would you do if the idea of reliving your life for an eternity would be true? Would you embrace it, or would you be terrified by it?

As Billie asks herself in “everything I wanted”,

“If I knew it all then would I do it again?

Would I do it again?”

Nietzsche argues that our first reaction would be fear and despair: our life is tragic and there’s much suffering in it. The thought that we must relive it forever seems daunting.

But then Nietzsche imagines an alternative reaction. Let’s suppose we could welcome the news, embrace it as something that we desire? That, says Nietzsche, would be the ultimate expression of a life-affirming attitude: to want this life, all of it. With all its pain and suffering and boredom, again and again. That is essentially what Nietzsche wanted to encourage: the importance of being a “yea-sayer,” a life-affirmer, and of embracing amor fati (love of one’s fate).

In what seems like a Stoic way of looking at life, Billie concludes her comment on the song:

“I mean, the message behind the song is like […] my brother is my best friend, and I have these dreams and these things happen, and no matter what happens, he’s gonna always be there for me, and it’s the same the other way around.”

3) COPYCAT

By the way, you’ve been uninvited

’Cause all you say are all the same things I did

Copycat trying to cop my manner

Watch your back when you can’t watch mine

Copycat trying to cop my glamour

Why so sad, bunny, you can’t have mine?

Billie commented on the lyrics:

Everybody has a little bit of people copying what they do. And everybody copies what other people do, because before you really know yourself, you’re trying out different personalities. Sometimes people really don’t know themselves because they try out everybody, and they just don’t have any of themselves in them. And they’re kind of everyone else combined. Which is just wack. Just be you, dude. I don’t want to see you as someone else. That’s already them.

It came from a lot of different people. It wasn’t just one specific person. Basically people just do a lot of this same shit I do, and I’m just like, “Can you not?” I already exist.

Kierkegaard on Authenticity

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish “golden age” of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction.

The famous existentialist philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, once said,

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

He harshly criticized many of his contemporaries and warned the public against living an inauthentic life.

What did he mean by that?

Here’s an excerpt from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, thoroughly explaining Kierkegaard’s view:

„Kierkegaard’s work on authenticity and his suggestion that each of us is to ’become what one is’ is best seen as linked to his critical stance towards a certain social reality and a certain essentialist trend in philosophical and scientific thought. On the one hand, he condemned aspects of his contemporary social world, claiming that many people have come to function as merely place-holders in a society that constantly levels down possibilities to the lowest common denominator. In more contemporary terms, we can say that Kierkegaard provides a criticism of modern society as causing “inauthenticity”. Living in a society characterized by such “massification” lead to what he refers to as widespread “despair” that comes to the fore as spiritlessness, denial, and defiance.

On the other hand, he rejected the view that a human being should be regarded as an object, as a substance with certain essential attributes. Rather than being an item among others, Kierkegaard proposes to understand the self in relational terms: ’The self is a relation that relates itself to itself…’. This relation consists in the unfolding project of taking what we find ourselves with as beings in the world and imparting some meaning or concrete identity to our own life course. Thus, the self is defined by concrete expressions through which one manifests oneself in the world and thereby constitutes one’s identity over time. In Kierkegaard’s view, ’becoming what one is’ and evading despair and hollowness is not a matter of solitary introspection, but rather a matter of passionate commitment to a relation to something outside oneself that bestows one’s life with meaning”.

I think that’s healthy advice. Trying to copy your idols is only natural, and to an extent it’s OK, however, there comes a time in life when you have to develop your own self — to do something because you want to do it and it aligns with your own values, not because someone you look up to did it before. Then, ironically, you can become a role-model for someone else in your life. And the cycle goes on.

Becoming your authentic self is a slow and painful process, because it often involves dealing with your deepest insecurities and weaknesses. Pain is inevitable, and we have to accept this fact if we want to grow.

As Carl Jung previously stated,

„The actual processes of individuation — the conscious coming-to-terms with one’s own inner center or Self — generally begins with a wounding of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it.”

Billie Eilish may seem like another pop-star, another temporary trend — and it very well may be so — but I have a feeling there’s more to her than meets the eye, and this article was an attempt to show that.

Through her music, she implies that we should accept our darkness as an essential part of us, and thus paving the way towards a cathartic experience for the masses.

Like in the case of Twenty One Pilots (which I’ve written about), she’s a rare example of a mainstream artist who is authentic. She shows that being mainstream and being authentic don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

“Lyrics are so important. I don’t think people realize how important they are”. — Billie Eilish