When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Review

Recorded in a bedroom at the family house by a seventeen year old and her brother, this sounds like nothing else that went to number one in 2019. Finneas O'Connell builds the songs from whispers, sub bass, a dentist's drill and the click of a dental aligner coming out, and leaves so much room that Billie Eilish can sing barely above a breath and still own the track. Bad Guy is the obvious triumph, a nursery rhyme strut that collapses into a sludgy coda, and Bury a Friend is a horror film told from the monster's side of the bed.

The writing is about night terrors, anxiety and the suspicion that the adults have no idea either, and it lands more often than not. It sags where the concept tips into gimmick. The opening skit, the lecture of Xanny and Wish You Were Gay have not aged well, and the middle stretch repeats its tricks. The quieter closing run, Listen Before I Go and I Love You, shows the singer she was already becoming. It won Album of the Year as part of her sweep of the four biggest Grammys and set the template for a decade of hushed, close miked pop.