As Billie Eilish’s sole peer at the moment (though we can count Griff, one supposes), it’s difficult to know if Olivia Rodrigo was influenced by Eilish first or if Eilish has all at once been infected with the “Paramore meets Avril Lavigne” effect that Rodrigo has repopularized. As a “punk”/“rock” chick in a more unapologetically pop way than Miley Cyrus has been of late with her Plastic Hearts era, Rodrigo has seemed to make it a safe space again for women to explore their angsty, “I’m going to scream as loud as I can” side. Even though Courtney Love would call bullshit on that.
On the latest single of the same name from Happier Than Ever, Eilish goes all out for that pursuance, unleashing her demons after a period of calm, cool collectedness during the first portion of the song that finds her using her “quiet” voice. The one that makes men feel at ease and lulls them into a false sense of security before she decides to say enough is enough and go completely apeshit with her emotions. The same phenomenon occurs on Rodrigo’s runaway hit from earlier this year, “drivers license.” With the first portion of the song offering a controlled melancholy that expresses the regret, “And you’re probably with that blonde girl/Who always made me doubt/She’s so much older than me/She’s everything I’m insecure about/Yeah, today, I drove through the suburbs/‘Cause how could I ever love someone else?” Funnily enough, the “older” blonde girl sounds like she could just as easily be talking about Eilish over Sabrina Carpenter.
Building up to the dramatic “shouting” pitch (since all men think anything above whisper is considered shouting for a woman) of the chorus and bridge, Eilish mimics the Rodrigo gold standard in her own song at the three minute, two second mark as she bemoans, “And I don’t talk shit about you on the internet/Never said anything bad.” But even prior to that, the tone of the song alters at two minutes, twenty eight seconds—the exact moment Rodrigo herself bursts out in “drivers license” with, “Red lights, stop signs/I still see your face in the white cars, front yards/Can’t drive past the places we used to go to/‘Cause I still fuckin’ love you, babe/Sidewalks we crossed I still hear your voice in the traffic, we’re laughing/Over all the noise/God, I’m so blue, know we’re through But I still fuckin’ love you, babe.”
While the structural setup of “Happier Than Ever” very much mimics “drivers license,” it would be a mistake to discount its similarity to another “angry” Rodrigo single, “good 4 u.” On it, Rodrigo famously deplores, “I’ve lost my mind, I’ve spent the night cryin’ on the floor of my bathroom/But you’re so unaffected, I really don’t get it/But I guess good for you.” Eilish is likewise irritated by her own ex’s callousness as she “screams,” “And all that you did was make me fuckin’ sad/So don’t waste the time I don’t have/And don’t try to make me feel bad.” Granted, she has nothing on Alanis (nor does Rodrigo, for that matter) as she continues, “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.” It might not be “You Oughta Know” but it certainly conveys the contempt that so many women find themselves feeling in the wake of putting too much stock in the expectations they have of a bloke.
Where Eilish favors water to drown out her sorrows in the “Happier Than Ever” video, Rodrigo prefers fire to set her room ablaze in one final bout of rage-ridden glory—although she is, toward the end, standing in the sea of water and/or gasoline that has filled her room. And ultimately, she gives in to a “soothing,” full-fledged watery ending herself. One that overtly filches a scene from Jennifer’s Body in which Jennifer Check is swimming gleefully in the water after eating a boy. Eilish, instead, prefers to pilfer more heavily from Beyoncé in the “Denial” portion of the Lemonade visual album. Thus, in both cases, each pop star feeds off not only one another’s influence, but the influence of those women who have forged a path long before them. A presently well-tread one that doesn’t necessarily mean Eilish and Rodrigo shouldn’t get a bit more creative in terms of how they steal, er, “repurpose.”
