Getting Everything You Wanted with Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish’s Sunday night headline slot at this year’s Reading Festival is just her latest explosive success.
Yet despite huge success at a young age, her music shows that life is no bed of roses. She isn’t scared to plumb the depths of despair, disappointment, and guilt in her lyrics and music videos. In Getting Older, for example, she hints at wrong things that have happened to her, and ways she has acted: “Last week I realised I crave pity / when I retell a story, I make everything sound worse.”
Though Billie has said on her Me & Dad Radio podcast that she isn’t religious, her music explores themes where the Christian faith has much to say. Since she considers herself “open to every belief, pretty much” I think she, and you, will be interested to think for a few minutes how her music relates to the good news about Jesus Christ.
In Happier than Ever, Billie speaks of an unequal relationship where she gave far more than he ever did. You can feel the righteous indignation and regret as she sings:
I could talk about every time that you showed up on time
But I’d have an empty line, ‘cause you never did.
Never paid any mind to my mother or friends
So I shut ‘em all out for you ‘cause I was a kid.
No wonder the video shows her tears becoming a flood – one that can perhaps wash her clean of that toxic relationship, giving her a new start. And no wonder you and I can relate to Billie here. We’ve all been in relationships or friendships where we’ve done all the giving, while the other person does all the taking. We long for friendships of real give and take. But also, surely, we sometimes want to be washed clean of mistakes we’ve made, harsh words we’ve spoken, or even shutting out family and friends to impress someone we look up to. This can be even more the case when it comes to how we’ve treated God – making use of all the good things he gives us (most of all, life itself), while ignoring him. Could there be a way to be washed clean and made new?
In Everything I Wanted, Billie’s luck seems to have changed:
I had a dream
I got everything I wanted
But when I wake up, I see
You with me
In this video Billie drives a car with her and a guy inside straight into the ocean. As the song continues, we see the vehicle fill with water, with the two still inside. But this song isn’t about romance, it’s about her relationship with her brother, Finneas. He has always been her protector, her greatest support, the one who helps her stay alive when everything seems helpless. He is always with her.
I wish you the very best in all your relationships. I hope they give you great happiness. But Billie is onto something when she tells us we can’t get our ultimate fulfilment from a romantic relationship –even the best! We need to push further though, and say even relationships with family can’t offer the security and joy we long for and need. Even family members let us down. Even brothers and sisters can’t always help us.
And the Bible’s message is – hey, that’s no surprise! Because even though God made us for relationships with one another, most of all he made us to know him. And we can – through his Son, Jesus. See, the closest and most enduring of romantic relationships, husband and wife, is just a picture, a shadow, of the loving relationship between Jesus and his people. Also, hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, these words were written: “There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother”. These words from the Bible are fulfilled in Jesus: the greatest friend, the closest brother.
Whatever you know about Jesus, you’re probably aware of his death. And as he went to the cross, Jesus wept so we could have joy with him. On the cross, He ‘drowned’, dying so we could be washed clean and have full, free, forever life with him. He loved us, despite the fact we were just after whatever we could get from him, taking all the time but not interested in giving.
Jesus, risen from death, gives fulfilment we won’t get from any purely human relationship; only from knowing the God who made us and loves us. As an African writer named Augustine once said: “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you, Lord.” Billie says she’s open to belief – are you open-minded enough to explore more about Jesus and his good news?