Billie Eilish WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? LP (Orange Vinyl)

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Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 397/500!

WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? is the debut album from singer/songwriter Billie Eilish and includes "when the party's over," "you should see me in a crown" and "bury a friend." The album follows 2017's dont smile at me EP, which recently peaked at #14 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. According to Yahoo Music, the seventeen-year-old artist's debut is only the seventh album by a woman to tally more than 300,000 units in one week since the Billboard chart began measuring albums by equivalent units; the other albums by female artists to hit that benchmark have been Adele's 25, Taylor Swift's 1989 and Reputation, Beyoncé's Lemonade, P!nk's Beautiful Trauma, and Ariana Grande's thank u, next. Eilish's superstar fans include Julia Roberts, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea, and the Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, who said, "The connection that she has with her audience is the same thing that was happening with Nirvana in 1991." Yahoo Entertainment named her one of the breakout music artists of 2018.

Highlights include the hypnotic minimalist single 'Bury a Friend,' an unnerving nightmare that is as disturbing as it is addictive; the twisted funhouse electro-pop 'Ilomilo'; and 'You Should See Me in a Crown,' a spiritual descendant of Lorde's 'Royals' that finds Eilish making a power grab to rule the one-horse 'nothing town' instead of simply complaining about it... but it's the swelling storm of 'I Love You,' a heartbreaking acoustic beauty, that pegs Eilish as something more than a spooky, scare-the-parents gimmick. Indeed, with When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, she demonstrates that she can do it all, hinting at a bright future that could truly go in any direction, as messy and hopeful as youth can get.

Recorded with the help of her older brother Finneas in their family home in Los Angeles, it's an album full of dressed-down avant-pop with D.I.Y. immediacy and intimacy that can still hold its own amid Top 40 maximalists like Ariana Grande and Halsey. Eilish's sound is hyper-modern, but still feels classic; evoking another Billie in history, she sets the jazz-aware swing in her vocals over skittering trap beats and doo-wop piano asides.

When We All Fall Asleep…ticks all the boxes for a memorable and game-changing debut album. It's a brave and resounding first step for an artist with bags of potential and over the next decade, you'll no doubt see popular music scrabbling to try and replicate what this album does on every level. There'll always be copycats, as Billie noted on her 2017 song of the same name, but none will be able to reach these heights any time soon.

The debut album from the meteoric pop star lives in a world of its own: gothic, bass-heavy, at turns daring and quite beautiful.

Trust us: This album is too good for teenagers. Well, all right - they're welcome to it, too - but you don't have to be under 21, or 71, to delight in real-dealness when you hear it... With all its moments of distortion and attitude, tempered by sheer loveliness, and rude and emotional songs about night terrors and daydreams, 'When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?' feels like a rock 'n' roll album, even if there's virtually nothing on it that sounds like rock music. And although the jazziness is more latent than blatant in this sonic blast, she hasn't done any disgrace to the name her parents gave her, either. Attention, 2020 Grammys: The future still isn't quite done being female.

There's been a lot of rah-rah about how Eilish is changing the pop game. Or how she knows how to blend genres. Or how she's a succinct distillation of all pop culture. None of that's wrong; in fact, those are all strengths. Yet, what's most intriguing about Eilish is how she toes the line between niche and universal. On the surface, When We All Fall Asleep comes off as aggressively abrasive, but it's not. There's so much economy to the songwriting; it's as much of a Rubik's cube as her own fashion sensibilities. The fact that more and more people are trying to figure it out is why Billiemania keeps getting louder, and stronger, and, ultimately, more interesting.

Combined with the production talents of her brother Finneas O'Connell, Billie Eilish takes on the airs of the Brothers Grimm, rewriting pop fairy tales into biting, bouncing cautionary electro-stories with moody loops and skittering synth. In this storybook, Billie Eilish is the anti-hero for whom we've been waiting.