Image: Instagram/@billieeilish
LOS ANGELES — After dropping a brief video on Monday sporting her new blonde look, Billie Eilish has announced that she will release her second full-length album, titled “Happier Than Ever,” on July 30, and will drop a new song on Thursday morning.
“MY NEW ALBUM ‘Happier Than Ever’ OUT JULY 30TH!,” she wrote in a social media post. “This is my favorite thing i’ve ever created and i am so excited and nervous and EAGER for you to hear it. i can’t even tell you. i’ve never felt so much love for a project than i do for this one. hope you feel what i feel. alsoooo new song out thursday at 9am too!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”
Judging by titles of the songs from the album (listed below) and it’s clearly ironic title (she appears in tears on the cover), the lyrics continue the dark vibe of her Grammy-sweeping 2019 debut full-length, “When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?” It includes her two most recent singles, “My Future” and “Therefor I Am,” although not her recent collaboration with Rosalia. Like her debut, it was written and produced with her brother and musical collaborator, Finneas.
The tracks are as follows: 1. Getting Older 2. I Didn’t Change My Number 3. Billie Bossa Nova 4. my future 5. Oxytocin 6. GOLDWING 7. Lost Cause 8. Halley’s Comet 9. Not My Responsibility 10. OverHeated 11. Everybody Dies 12. Your Power 13. NDA 14. Therefore I Am 15. Happier Than Ever 16. Male Fantasy
News of the album was teased earlier on billboards in several cities.
Eilish told Stephen Colbert in February that she’d recorded a new album in lockdown, the result of her first prolonged period of not touring since her career began in earnest in 2016.
“I don’t think I would’ve made the same album, or even the album at all, if it weren’t for COVID,” she tells Colbert. “That doesn’t mean it’s about COVID at all, it’s just that, when things are different in your life, you’re different. That’s just how it is. So, I have to thank COVID for that, and that’s about it.”
The logistics of recording an album may be easier for Eilish and her brother and musical collaborator Finneas, as they famously recorded most of their previous releases, 2019’s “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” and the “Don’t Smile at Me” EP, in the Los Angeles home they grew up in.
Eilish kept details about the album light, although Colbert asked her later in the interview if she showed off her vocal chops on the new material: “There’s a couple of moments on this album where I pull some tricks out. It’s really just about what I feel like sounds good.”
She has released four new songs in the nearly two years since “When We All Fall Asleep” dropped: “All I Ever Wanted”; the title theme from the delayed James Bond film “No Time to Die”; “My Future” and a recent duet with Spanish singer Rosalia, “Lo Vas Olvidar.”
Eilish also talked about the imminent release of her documentary, “The World’s a Little Blurry,” which captures her hectic life in the months leading up to last year’s Grammy Awards, which saw her and Finneas capturing multiple awards, including Best Album, Song, Record, New Artist and Producer, among others. JB
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