The Anxious Love Songs of Billie Eilish

From the start of her career, Eilish has never been particularly comfortable with celebrity, and at times she has appeared viscerally repelled by it; the anxiety and paranoia brought on by global fame are another theme here, and are perhaps directly responsible for Eilish’s romantic angst. On “Skinny,” the yearning ballad that opens the album, she reflects on coming of age under the scrutiny of strangers. “People say I look happy / Just because I got skinny / But the old me is still me and maybe the real me / And I think she’s pretty,” Eilish sings, her voice feathery and resigned. (“The Internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny / And somebody’s gotta feed it,” she points out.) “Skinny” is a gorgeous song, wounded and fragile, with a whiff of Lilith Fair folksiness. It ends with a mournful string figure by the Attacca Quartet, the only other musicians featured on the album besides Eilish, O’Connell, and Eilish’s tour drummer, Andrew Marshall.