This past Wednesday, Billie Eilish dropped her most recent music video for “all the good girls go to hell”, a song from her 2019 album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? This new video, directed by Rich Lee, mimics the creepy vibe of Michael Chaves’ “bury a friend” by continuing its story. It opens with a scene from the older video in which black-gloved hands rip off her hospital gowns and stick white syringes in her back. Afterward, we see Eilish sprout white wings and fall from heaven into a black pit of oil. The image of black coating her white wings and filling her eyes as she struggles to crawl out of the pit is disturbingly captivating. As she stumbles down the street trailing oil, flames filled with dancing women engulf the area behind her. Eventually the fire catches up to her and sets her wings on fire. By the end, she turns back, wings burnt, and walks back into the post-apocalyptic scene.
Eilish’s mesmerizingly soft voice is haunting and extremely catchy. When connecting the lyrics to the music video, there is an obvious meaning behind it all. After she released her music video for “all the good girls go to hell,” she posted on her Instagram story “Right now there are millions of people all over the world begging our leaders for attention. Our earth is warming up at an unprecedented rate, ice caps are melting, our oceans are rising, our wildlife is being poisoned and our forests are burning.” She then stated that September 23 is the upcoming 2019 UN Climate Action Summit. “Standing there, killing time, can’t commit to anything but a crime” could very well be meant to point out our nations’ leaders’ inability to come to a consensus in regards to fighting climate change. In her Instagram story, Billie emphasized that “the clock is ticking” and mentioned strikes on September 20th and September 27th at which our generations’ voices can be heard. Eilish’s dystopian music video for “all the good girls go to hell” draws attention to the California wildfires, the Amazon rainforest fires, rising sea levels, and many other effects of climate change.
Billie Eilish has quickly shot to fame at only 17, largely thanks to her enthralling and distinct style. With this fame, Eilish has used the attention of tens of millions of people as an opportunity to talk about climate change, urging our generation to take action. While statistics about climate change are one way of promoting the cause, Eilish realizes that as a young star, she has the power to use media and pop-culture as a way to shape the way we view our relationship with nature. While it may not be the responsibility of famous people to use their fame to draw attention to societal issues, Eilish has gracefully navigated this space to advocate a powerful message about climate change that our generation is sure to pay attention to.
