POP/ROCK
Billie Eilish, "Your Power" (Interscope)
In her haunting new single, Eilish, 19, depicts a destructive relationship in which a predatory older man takes advantage of a younger woman.
"She said you were a hero/ You played the part," she sings in her trademark whisper amid a dreamy acoustic arrangement, "But you ruined her in a year/ Don't act like it was hard."
Eilish keeps shifting the narrative point of view, and she certainly never names any names. But the song's showbiz setting seems apparent when she asks the guy, "Will you only feel bad if it turns out that they kill your contract?"
Written by Eilish and produced by her brother Finneas, "Your Power" is just the latest in a series of recent singles in which the singer offers an unvarnished picture of life since her Grammy-sweeping 2019 debut, "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?"
Last year she sang about hangers-on looking to capitalize on her name in "Therefore I Am"; before that she wondered in "Everything I Wanted" if getting precisely that was a dream or a nightmare.
Yet "Your Power" might be her most clear-eyed and earnest indictment of the complicated dynamics at play in any situation where age, gender and celebrity meet.
"Try not to abuse your power/ I know we didn't choose to change," Eilish sings near the song's end. "You might not wanna lose your power/ But power isn't pain."
