Understanding Bad Guy

Pop is weird now and I love it.

What is pop music? It used to be a pretty simple question, but in the last few decades, changes in the landscape of music consumption and distribution have begun to dissolve the boundaries between genres, and not even the carefully curated landscape of pop has been safe. There are many examples of the increasingly obscure, esoteric, and divergent soundscapes that have come to define modern pop, but if I had to sum it up in one artist, I think the clear choice is Billie Eilish. So let's talk about her.

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Also, thanks to Jareth Arnold!

[tone]

Some additional thoughts/corrections:

1) When I was making the major version of the bass riff, I went back and forth a lot on whether to end on E or F#. F# matches the scale degree, but E is a pentatonic note, which makes it a better match for the function. I decided to go with E but I'm open to the possibility that F# would've been better. Also, was there actually a point to that demo, or did I just do it 'cause it sounded funny? The world may never know.

2) I didn't want to get into it in the script 'cause it seemed overly technical, but I should note that when I'm talking about how the really low D is hard to parse as a pitch, that also has to do with timbre: On an instrument with more complex overtones, like an electric bass, it'd be easier to recognize because you'd have the upper structure of harmonics to help you fill in the blanks, but this is a really simple waveform with very little happening above around 200hz, so you don't have as many clues.

3) In the Call Me Maybe example, I realized after filming that there's a tiny little "and" after "beg" in the first bar, so my first alteration is inaccurate, although honestly I have to be listening pretty close to hear that so I dunno, I think the general point holds, and the second alteration is extremely present.

4) Should I have included a bit about the A diminished voicing in the background vocals? I dunno, maybe. I couldn't think of anything to say beyond "it's there", though, and the video felt long enough that I didn't want to drag it out further without a clear purpose. But it is there, and that's cool.

4) One thing I noticed in the stems is that the traffic signal sample actually has its strongest accent on the 16th note _after_ the downbeat, which in principle could mean more metric instability, but I don't actually hear much of that effect in the full mix. Still, made editing hard 'cause I kept wanting to align the downbeat with the wrong sound.

5) According to a screenshot of the mix project that engineer Rob Kinelski shared, that industrial percussion track is called "Locust Kit" and that's just a really cool name.

[BuddhaMonkey]

One huge element of the vocal delivery that I didn't hear addressed in this: the quietness. The most distinctive thing about Billie Eilish's vocal style has to be the way she always sounds like she's whispering in your ear, letting the microphone do all the work of projecting the sound outward. Most singers perform in the studio like they're singing in front of a crowd, but she actually sounds like she's recording alone in her bedroom for people listening alone through headphones. It feels intimate, obviously, but it also feels thoroughly modern, because it's incorporating recent changes in the way music is produced and received into the sound of the music itself.

It's also part of what makes the "duh" so effective, because that's the one point in the song where she shifts from that whisper tone to what sounds like a more normal speaking volume. The rest of the song feels like she's almost literally inviting you inside this character's head, but there she suddenly shoves you away and makes it clear you're not really in on the joke.

[BenjiN]

Wait wtf where am I? Am I no longer "Welcomed to 12tone?"

[Mireille]

Using Vincent Adultman as the illustration for 3 bass beats stacked on top of each other is *chef's kiss*.

[Rubrickety]

I lost it at the doodle of the Tesla Truckstrosity for "overcorrection".

[jdr]

Kind of a small thing, but the part where you mentioned that she's rhyming the second to last word in the faster part of the verse felt really nice to see, because I know there's a lot of people online who (likely in bad faith) would get really mad at that and say she's just rhyming "guy" with "guy" which always frustrates me a lot whenever I see it happen. Keep up the great work!

[Mighty_Atheismo]

When Rotting Johnathan said that really spoke to me.

[Domitianvs]

That Tesla Cybertruck as an illustration for an over correction is just absolutely sublime. Well done, good sir, well done indeed!

[davidg]

At 26:30 your subtitles restart to the beginning of the script, leaving the last 4 minutes with the wrong text.

[WRussellPortfolio]

Fun fact - that synth melody line was inspired by the main theme from Plants vs Zombies.

[alexgrunde]

It’s ironic to me to call this an “end of pop” song as pop has always played this knife’s edge dance of incorporating the new underground, avant garde, experimental, ground breaking work from other genres, but never too deep or too soon to alienate the mass market audience. It needs to be just new enough to feel contemporary and with it, but not so new that it’s unmoored from the conventions the pop music consumers are expecting. Billie and Finneas do that expertly in meshing EDM genres with catchy, hook-filled writing (and if there’s anything that’s dead in modern pop music, it’s hooks).

[bonecanoe]

Another factor in this transformation is the generational handover of the pop culture from Millennials to Zoomers. It's hard to pin down an exact year when this happened but I think around 2017 was the tipping point--Lorde's "Royals" was the warning shot that things were about to change, but "Bad Guy" in 2019 signified that the Zoomers had fully arrived. And say what you want about Millennials but they loved their bright, escapist electro-pop, whereas Zoomers...they're just a weird, weird generation lol. And I don't mean that as an insult btw. No one celebrity exemplifies the Gen Z vibe more than Billie Eilish in my opinion. I don't really like most Zoomer pop but I've been fascinated by Billie since I heard "Bury a Friend" randomly on the radio in 2019. Like her or not (I do, for the record), she is a generational artist.

[fabianwho]

I hereby declare high interest in an analysis of Bury a friend, which is also my favourite track

[Lemanic]

It’s just a really blues-y Deep House track fit into a pop song. The blues is the creep factor here. She made the vibes of Larry Heard speak goth.

[Cross_Contam]

I'm not too much of a pop fan but this song hit pretty hard like when Brittany Spears' Toxic came out. They were more experimental than many other pop songs.

Oh and with the bass being a drum thing... not related to this but if you write a cool midi drum part and then copy/paste it into a bass track you can get some pretty cool yet dissonant primus esque bass lines.

[XckBrm]

The most absolutely remarkable thing about When We Fall Asleep... is the deafening use of silence throughout the record. Xanny is my favorite example of it. Right after she says the titular lyric? Silence. Incredible. Coming from a punk rock background, one of the most used tools in my bag is the idea that the most powerful thing you can do in a track is completely stop playing, especially in genres like punk, or in this case pop, the way that the album utilizes silences makes the production mouth wateringly profound in my opinion. Love the way you covered this one. More weird pop, please!

[jerrys.]

Sent this to my friend who teaches music for 4th-7th graders. to explain to your students why music theory and informed critical listening is still relevant in current music. Also, if you want to explain to the boomers why modern music is still worthy of critical listening.

Also, "working really hard to sound lazy" and how that describes the depth of the meaning of the lyrics through their delivery really makes me appreciate Billie Eilish even if her music isn't really my vibe. Doesn't make her or her brother, who co-wrote and mixed the album, lesser skilled musicians just because their music "sounds" simple. It's not simple, it's been pared away to the bone, so every remaining element has to be so tight that any deviation has to be intentional by the artist.

[jsloanhpi]

Oh I instantly-clicked here, I have never seen the song’s appeal AT ALL but 12tone is phenomenal in teaching me why all musicians shown here are musical geniuses.

[stefanpredoi]

I always thought that the lead synth's portamento and Lydian minor scale was an intentional callback to the 1950s theremin movie soundtracks. I think it adds a layer to the sarcastic horror aesthetic by evoking something that used to be considered scary but now seems campy and funny. Billie & Finneas are very smart songwriters.

[TheHopperUK]

Aw I'd love to hear you go into Bury a Friend.