Billie Eilish, a seventeen year old musician, released her second album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? on March 29. Billie works in collaboration with her twenty-one year old brother, Finneas O’Connell, who produces and helps write all her songs. They  released tracks together on the album such as “bad guy,” the first song on the album, which is a very creepy and eerie start, which sets the tone for the rest of the album. Finneas and Billie have both come out and said that trap and hip-hop styles have heavily influenced their music production.

She has previously released four of the fourteen songs on this album, tracks such as “you should see me in a crown” and “bury a friend” which both have chilling backup vocals and spine-chilling sound effects, such as a sword scraping against metal or a stapler being used. Eilish has actually been making music since the age of fourteen, with her release of the very popular “Ocean Eyes,” which unlike her newest releases, is a sweet and delicate tune, just like any other teenage love song. With her new music though, Billie is redefining what it means to be a teenage pop star.

Stacey Anderson, a writer for pitchfork.com, said in a review of Billie’s album that her, “creepy eccentricity feels so removed from the pop formula; it helps distance her from the music industry’s historically lewd maceration of teen idols.” Anderson believes that Billie is changing what teen stardom looks like, with her haunting set of tracks from this new release. Eilish does not have a professional studio either, which adds to the persona she is setting of being a self-made teen musician. In an interview with AWAL, a British record label, Finneas showed his home studio, which is not a fancy recording booth, but simply his childhood bedroom and a few pianos, where the siblings write and record all their songs. He said in that interview that all the vocals for the entire album were captured while Billie was sitting on his bed.

The track that caught the media’s attention was titled, “my strange addiction,” which sampled clips of the popular TV show, The Office. The clips were from a season seven episode, Threat Level Midnight, which opens the track with main character Michael Scott (Steve Carell) saying, “No Billie, I haven’t done that dance since my wife died.” No one really knows the significance behind this choice of sampling, but everyone seemed to love it. The track then goes into a bass-heavy beat, the tone then quickly changes in the chorus to a more sweet and bouncy feel, then sampling more of The Office.

Maymie Burris, a freshman, said, “I really enjoyed the the new Billie Eilish album. I’ve never really been a Billie Eilish ‘fan’ I really only knew the songs on the radio, but a lot of my friends were listening to it so I gave it a try and I loved it.” Maymies style of music is very different from Billies music, but she still loves it. Even people who would not normally listen to Billie still love her music. Maymie also adds, “Billie is very relatable because she is so young and that’s why she has blown up recently.” Billies status of just being a normal teenager making music makes lots of teens look up to her and make them think they too, can be like Billie.

Billie is not going away anytime soon, in fact, her music career is just starting. She is changing the whole meaning of that being a teenage pop star means today. Her inclusion of layered vocals and her minimalistic style is going to impact the future of music production and style is going to impact the future of pop music, with the layered vocals and minimalistic style. Even though she is only seventeen, she is changing the music industry in big ways.