To accompany Billie Eilish’s latest single/ode to brotherly love, her video for “Everything I Wanted” is decidedly staid by past Eilish standards. That is to say, no likenable sign of oil-drenched giant wings (as in “all the good girls go to hell“) or blue-black liquid pouring out of her eyes (as in “when the party’s over”)–save, perhaps, for the, at times, radioactive-looking flowers in shades of blue. Then again, maybe Eilish’s “regular” aesthetic itself is intended to be enough for this “stripped down” track, even if she’s occasionally given a hyper-real, oversaturated look covered in something like cellophane–appearing almost as an entity right out of The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” narrative.
At times walking aimlessly along a flowered abyss of a hill, seemingly in search of someone and no one, the video interweaves this scene of her in blue and pink striped overalls with another Finneas-inspired figure seeming to watch over in the distance in green and white striped overalls. When he finally sits down next to her on the hill, it makes for a decidedly prominent sleazecore Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum image. Indelible on the mind thanks to appearing on repeat in multiple instances throughout the video. Incidentally, Eilish probably should have incorporated these specific sartorial pieces into her recent fashion collab with Urban Outfitters.
With he green-haired and she blue-haired, there is also un certain Seussian quality to the entire look (something like Thing 1 and Thing 2). Yet there are some instances grounded in reality, like a scene of Eilish alone on a mattress on the floor, gazing out the window as she thinks, “It feels like yesterday was a year ago.” Maybe in the laws of the realm of where this video’s setting exists, it was. For when she’s wrapped in that watery sheet that looks like an update on the style of Busta Rhymes and Janet Jackson’s “What’s It Gonna Be?!” video, one can’t tell the difference anymore between Eilish’s dream and nightmare, the exact effect she was going for. Yet the soothing presence of her green-hued Tweedle-Dum, who reaches out to take her hand just when she feels at her loneliest, is enough to make the lack of distinction not matter. For there is comfort in a constant presence. A brother (both literal and metaphorical) in musical arms.
And when she can’t have her Tweedle-Dum on call, it appears as though our Tweedle-Dee reverts to the Alice role, languishing among a field of flowers (even if they aren’t daisies–that would be too prosaic for Gen Z). After all, Alice, too, ultimately had some trouble distinguishing between dreams and nightmares, fantasy and reality.
