The 30th — Billie Eilish (2022)

Why this song

You know Billie Eilish for tracks full of deep bass and effects, built on her brother's computer. This is the opposite: a fingerpicked acoustic guitar and a voice. That is why the record it came out on is simply called Guitar Songs.

And yet, near the end, the song comes to sound like a panic attack. So the question is how: how do you make a single guitar sound like distress?

Historical context

On 30 November 2021 someone close to Billie Eilish was in a car accident. She saw it up close and called it "the most indescribable thing" she had ever had to witness. A month later, on 30 December, she wrote this song with her brother Finneas O'Connell. It was the first thing they wrote together after the album Happier Than Ever. The title is that date.

The song tells what happened almost like a film: the ambulance, the hospital and, at the end, the moment of the accident itself.

Photo: Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

They had planned to keep it for the next album. But Billie wanted to say it "right now", so on 21 July 2022 she released it, unannounced, together with another song, "TV". Two songs on their own make an EP, a short record. She first played it live on 13 August, in Manila.

Musical characteristics

Listen to how many things sound at once: almost always just two, guitar and voice. When there are few layers and lots of space between them, the texture is called light. It is light here on purpose: nothing distracts from the story.

The guitar doesn't strum, it picks: it plays the strings one at a time. And underneath, in the first round, the bass walks down step by step: G, F sharp, E. It is a downward path the ear follows without noticing.

Now listen to the end of the chorus. There is a chord that doesn't belong to the key: C minor, where G major would normally have C major. One note changes and everything goes dark at once. Taking a chord from the minor key and using it in a major one is called a borrowed chord, and it is one of the most common tricks for making something sound sad without saying so.

Something similar happens in the bridge, but slower. The G chord stays put while a single inner note moves up and down by semitones: G, G augmented, G sixth, G augmented again. It is like a needle that won't stop moving inside something that isn't going anywhere.

And on top of that, the song grows. The guitar plays louder and louder and the voice becomes more intense, for almost half a minute without a break, up to the loudest point of the whole song. That gradual rise in volume is called a crescendo. Then it cuts off.

The ending has no fixed pulse: the score marks it rubato, meaning the tempo stretches and shrinks as the player chooses.

Hard data: G major, 4/4 felt in 2, about 73 BPM, 3:36. Form: intro, verse and chorus twice, bridge and free ending.

Trivia and curiosities

• The title is a date, and the date happens twice. What it describes happened on a 30th, and she wrote it on the 30th of the next month. A song can also be a chronicle: it tells events in order, like a news report.

• The record is called "Guitar Songs", and Finneas played far more than guitar. The credits also list him on bass, drums, piano and synthesizer. Yet what you hear is almost only guitar and voice. Taking things out is a production decision, just like adding them.

• One song, two tempos. The attached score writes it at 148 crotchets per minute; Musicnotes at about 73, "in 2". They don't contradict each other: they count the same pulse in two ways. What you feel when you clap along is the pulse, and it doesn't always match the written number.

• The scream isn't done by the voice alone, it's done by the crescendo. On the recording the loudest point comes near the end, after half a minute of rising without a break, and then drops to almost nothing in three seconds. Contrast matters more than volume: if the whole song were loud, that moment wouldn't stand out.

• She didn't play it live until after releasing it. She premiered it on 13 August 2022 in Manila, three weeks later. In September she filmed a live version in Singapore's Cloud Forest greenhouse, which is in Resources: compare it with the studio one.

Guided listening

The timings are from the official lyric video in Resources.

• 0:00 — the guitar alone. Picked, soft, with the bass walking down step by step. That is how little you need to begin.
• 2:15 — it starts to rise. From here, guitar and voice grow without stopping for almost half a minute. This is the bridge: notice that the chords barely change; what changes is the intensity.
• 2:41 — it cuts off. After the loudest point of the whole song, it drops to almost nothing in three seconds. That sudden silence is part of the music.
• 2:46 — the ending. What is left is calm and fades away into silence. Compare this moment with 2:39: it is the same song at the two extremes of dynamics.

Classroom activities

• Play: the intro and verse round on guitar or keyboard: G – G/F♯ – Em – Am – G – D. The bass only needs the falling line: G, F sharp, E. The guitar score is in the class resources.

• Sing: the melody sits in a middle range, from low G to high D. The verse can be sung as a group, softly, almost spoken.

• Analyse: a closed question. With the video in front of you, mark the second where the sound starts to grow and the second where it cuts off. Then check whether the chords changed between those two moments.

• Create: play a four-chord round in G major that ends on C major. Repeat it, changing only that last chord to C minor. Write one sentence on what changes for the ear. Steal the procedure, not the song.

Key vocabulary

• Texture — textura
• Borrowed chord — acorde prestado
• Crescendo — crescendo (aumentar el volumen poco a poco)
• Rubato — rubato (tocar sin pulso fijo)

Resources

Official lyric video — Billie Eilish channel.

Live from Singapore's Cloud Forest — BillieEilishVEVO channel, September 2022. To compare with the studio version.

Guitar tutorial — Andy Hillier. A full lesson, with the fingerpicking explained slowly.

Guitar tutorial, easy version — Easy 2 Play Music, with chords and lyrics on screen. The one to use if the picking is still hard.

Piano tutorial — Atlantic Notes, easy version.

• Guitar score — on MuseScore, the same one in the class resources.
• Images — Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell at the O2 in London, 16 June 2022. Photos: Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.