Fall apart twice a day? Is this possible? Mentally yes, but physically I would arguably say no, it isn’t. In this week’s blog post on Billie Eilish I will be covering tropes, more specifically metaphors. A trope is when you are able to twist the meaning of a phrase. A metaphor more specifically is Metaphor- implied comparison achieved through a figurative use or words, a word is not used in its literal sense, but one analogous to it. The two things are of unlike nature yet have something in common. According to our Burgchardt and Jones book ““When light and dark images are used together in a speech, they indicate and perpetuate the simplistic, two valued black and white attitudes which rhetoricians and their audiences so often seem to prefer” I would agree with this statement because I know myself as a fan of music or movies metaphors make them a lot more interesting. Multiple of Billie Eilish’s song have metaphors in them and I will be discussing them in this blog post, specifically “All the Good Girls go to Hell” and “IDONTWANNABEYOUANYMORE”.

Starting off with “All the Good Girls go to Hell” the metaphor is in the song title itself. Without diving deep into the internet to find exact meaning, just by reading the title you can see it clearly. Good girls are known to go to “Heaven” because they are good, and it is known that “bad girls” go to hell because they are bad. So, for her to use this title shows that maybe not all girls that are “good girls” are really good. In a dissection of this song lyric by lyric there are two known interpretations of the line “All the good girls go to Hell” them being that “…a belief that moral acts are futile, because in the end she believes they will all fall short of that goodness. Another interpretation of this line is that Billie’s character believes that good girls are all miserable, something she has told herself to justify her behavior.” (Anderson, 2019). 

Another song Billie Eilish uses a metaphor in is “IDONTWANNABEYOUANYMORE” the line in this song being “fall apart twice a day”, this is physically impossible for a human being to fall apart twice a day, after the first time you would just be dead. But in these lyrics and the way it is used in this song she means it in an emotional way. In an interview with genius when referring to this line in the song she said “It’s so annoying to feel like this all the time, all the time. If someone is like, “Oh God, you fall apart so much.” If someone is like, “Oh God, you fall apart so much. You’re so annoying. You’re always fucking sad.” I’m like, “I know.” I have to be in this bitch all the time. I’m aware of how annoying it is.” (Genius, n.d.)When this song came out in 2017 Billie Eilish was very insecure and this is how she expressed how she felt about herself, she hated how sad she was and how frequently she would “fall apart”. For me this is one of my favorite lines in Billie’s music, I just think that it is rare for artist nowadays to be this open about how they are feeling and not cover it up with a smokescreen like most people in the limelight. 

Bibliography

Anderson, A. (2019). The Pop Song Professor . Retrieved from The Pop Song Professor : https://www.popsongprofessor.com/blog/2019/4/2/what-does-all-the-good-girls-go-to-hell-by-billie-eilish-mean

Genius. (n.d.). idontwannabeyouanymore. Retrieved from Genius: https://genius.com/Billie-eilish-idontwannabeyouanymore-lyrics