Happier than Ever premiered on July 30th of 2021 and it already has been shaking the media and consolidating Billie Eilish’s place in the pop music industry. The album expands Billie’s music a bit out of the edgy themes and heavy electronic beats but keeping the essence of her style with distorted synths, her clean recorded soft voice and an astonishing production from Finneas, who is also at the best of his career.

Great Synthesizers

The first track Getting Older already kicks in with distorted analog sinewave oscilators that sound like they should be clipping the hell out of the mix but they just fit in so nicely with the song that it kept me thinking ”How?”. The second track I Didn’t Change My Number ends with yet another distorted synth with a really hard LFO and high resonanse that isn’t for all ears but it’s a nice experimental touch in mainstream music, especially in the title track where the distortion simply blows through the roof just before a really calm acoustic guitar strumming in the last track Male Fantasy.

Great Production

This is arguably the best produced album I have personally listened to from the last 10 years and it just goes to show that this was well thought out to be an amazing experience and to ensure that Billie is kept in the spotlight for the next years to come. The voice recordings can be really intimate and clean and also overproduced and dirty depending on the intent behind one specific song or one specific part of a song and the vocal tracks that are studio chat really sound like authentic studio chat.

Great Singing

Although the nerd here tends to shine the light more on the production and composition aspects of a song, there’s no denying or overshadowing the fact that the vocal performance in all of Billie’s tracks is unique and on point with the intentions of the songs. There are moments of the album like in Therefore I Am where there are three simultaneous voices singing in harmony and they all complete the sound in a subtle and pleasent fashion that is hard to not fall in love with.

No Stop Reproduction

If you choose to listen to this release on spotify be sure to turn on the Gapless switch in the app settings because this one has a couple of songs that follow one another with no gap between the tracks which is just a nice touch and helps the album feel like a whole piece instead of a compilation of random music from said artist.

Billie Bossa Nova

This song deserves a special spot here just because me (Lord) and (Ethury) were baited by the title of this track, It has ”Bossa Nova” in it but the only thing related to the style this track has is chord extensions in a guitar. Nevertheless it’s a good way of getting the old and doing the familiar with inovation but it definetly shouldn’t be called ”Billie Bossa Nova”.

Overall Grade

This record scores an overall 9.5/10 in objectve aspects and a 7.8/10 in my perspective. Although this doesn’t fit my normal tastes and everyday listening it is undeniably an amazing production and work of art and was a pleasent experience to listen to. My personal favorite tracks from Happier Than Ever are Therefore I Am and GOLDWING.