CNN
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Billie Eilish has at all times accomplished issues her personal approach.
Whether or not or not it’s releasing her 2016 viral hit “Ocean Eyes” onto Soundcloud, a DIY music streaming website, or writing and recording her record-breaking debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, The place Do We Go?” along with her collaborator and brother Finneas O’Connell in her childhood bed room, Eilish, 22, has by no means been shy about straying from business norms – and it appears to be working effectively for the two-time Oscar-winner.
Along with her third studio album “Hit Me Arduous and Tender,” which drops on Friday, she’s remained constant. The sound of the album is bound to be a shock to all, as a result of Eilish deliberately selected to not launch a single previous to launching the album – once more, a quite unorthodox transfer.
“I wanna give it to you ,” she wrote on her Instagram page final month when saying the album.
Her 2019 debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, The place Do We Go?,” together with 2021’s “Happier Than Ever” and the brand new file, have been all co-written and produced by O’Connell. It follows Eilish and O’Connell’s Oscar win in March for his or her authentic tune for the “Barbie” film, “What Was I Made For,” which was one among 2023’s largest hits. The duo beforehand received the Oscar for authentic tune in 2022 for “No Time to Die.”
Nevertheless “Arduous and Tender” sounds, which we will quickly discover out, Eilish hinted in an interview with Rolling Stone final month that she discovered herself harkening again to her roots with this file, bringing to thoughts a time in Eilish’s musical journey the place she first set her personal precedent for being in management.
“I really feel like this album is me,” she instructed the outlet. “It’s not a personality. It feels just like the ‘When We All Fall Asleep, The place Do We Go?’ model of me. It seems like my youth and who I used to be as a child.”
Her penchant for bucking the norm is constant into her plans for her upcoming “Hit Me Hard and Soft” tour, which kicks off in Baltimore this fall. Eilish is selecting to skirt scalpers by proscribing ticket transfers for these buying tickets to her exhibits.
“The tour desires to present followers, not scalpers, one of the best likelihood to purchase tickets at face worth. To make this potential, they’ve chosen to make use of Ticketmaster’s Face Worth Alternate,” Ticketmaster’s Eilish ticket page reads. It additional notes that if followers can’t attend exhibits within the US or Canada that they’ve bought tickets for, they’ve the choice to resell them at face worth.
The transfer comes practically two years after the fervor surrounding the acquisition of tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour crashed the Ticketmaster website, leading to followers not gaining access to tickets, scalpers attempting to resell the tickets at ungodly costs and a subsequent congressional hearing.
Eilish was clearly paying consideration and seems to be one of many solely main mainstream artists to adapt, in hopes of stopping scalpers having the ability to hawk tickets at exorbitant resale charges.
And with “Hit Me Arduous and Tender,” Eilish can be attempting to face out and aside within the business along with her effort to guard one thing else she’s traditionally keen about: the surroundings.
The “Dangerous Man” singer made waves when she lamented in a March interview with Billboard concerning the “wasteful” follow of releasing a mess of album variants which, in flip, “will get them extra money.”
“It’s so wasteful, and it’s irritating to me that we’re nonetheless at a degree the place you care that a lot about your numbers and also you care that a lot about earning profits – and it’s all of your favourite artists doing that s—,” she mentioned on the time.
To again up her criticism, Eilish posted a manifesto on her web site describing her sustainability plan for the discharge of “Hit Me Arduous and Tender” after saying the album. She wrote that she’s going to solely launch eight vinyl variants “every on the identical day, containing the identical track-listing throughout the board” – to take away the motivation for die-hard followers who would buy all of the variants for any differing bonus tracks – “and all produced with probably the most sustainable practices out there.”
Environmental sustainability has remained on the forefront for Eilish to the present second, as on her Instagram tales on Wednesday, she included sustainable transport plans to her New York album listening occasion.
Maybe emboldened by the 2 Oscars or 9 Grammys that she’s received, or the truth that her first two albums have hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, the younger entertainer has a confirmed observe file of success doing issues her approach.
And why ought to she change now, if it’s working?