Why Did Billie Eilish Sing Like This?

I chanced upon this ‘live’ performance by Billie Eiish and thought that it’s such good classroom material to dissect for singing students:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL2HRdjDKnw

Disclaimer: I am neutral about her; I do like her songwriting abilities and how she emotes herself as a recording artiste.

This is strictly an objective analysis from the angle of a vocal teacher:

Timeline BreakDown

0:08

When she started singing the verse, you may observe that she was slouching (and hence closing her body). It sorts of still works for the part of the song that is a bit weepy and vulnerable and no high notes. It’s ok to get away with a closed body position for these low notes, but it doesn’t set up the vocal instrument for high / powerful notes that will come up.. .. her facial muscles were so relaxed in the verse (you could freeze any frame and see that she’s almost having a ‘sleepy face’),

0:48

This is where she started to go into trouble… her vocal instrument (the whole body) was not set up to receive the high and long notes in the chorus. Her body was still slouched and closed when she sang into the chorus.. and she shook her head after realising she emptied out all air in her lungs at 0.53 before finishing the phrase.

0.55

The breath here continued to be shallow because she was still slouching and breathing into her chest… hence the next phrase continued to have no vocal stability and feels like ‘out of air’

She was also releasing way too much air while singing this line - you could hear her pushing air out when she sang ‘ocean eyes’ as a last-ditch effort to squeeze her voice out (remember that our job as the singer is to preserve our air in the lungs to keep us going, and give mostly our voice to the audience).

1:03

This phrase has very low vocal placement because her soft-palate was not raised at all (cheekbones were down), and again, released way too much air. I know because at 1:10, this is how a person would breathe after completely emptying out the air in the lungs

1:16

When she sang “Ocean eyes”, it showed her protruding her jaw slightly to reach the high notes (instead of raising the soft-palate with good belly support). That’s why ‘cean’ is mostly a slush of air forced out of her mouth instead of voice. It’s a result of shallow breathing, low soft-palate, low vocal placement + pushing air out when singing high notes.

1:20

The ‘cean’ has no voice but 100% air pushed out from the vocal cords..  :((Reasons same as above)

2:08

Luckily from the 2nd chorus onwards, she raised her cheekbones and raised her soft-palate more (2:28 was flat, but she ‘scrapped through, phew!)

Maybe at this point you may ask me “But Bevlyn, she’s wrapped up in thick winter jacket, how can you tell where she’s breathing to?”

Check out how her upper body moves when she breathed at 2:30 (and for subsequent breaths). If you don’t look at where that matters, you won’t look at it.. but once you see it, you can’t un- see it And this is the part that is a little weird for me:

3:13 Somewhere here you can see a ‘glitch’ in the video… and from that point on…

3:19 The singing and the facial expression don’t match anymore

The singing continued and we can hear it as ‘live’ quality, but i suspect that it was post-recorded and then edited into this video for release

What Does This Performance Tell Us?

That famous singers may not know too much about techniques…  (it’s a logical deduction)… because…If all famous singers know about techniques that much, for this instance, Billie Eilish would have known how to correct her singing right away given that this is ‘live’ and not a studio setting where she can try 50 times to get 1 good take for a recording.

Most famous singers are natural singers (i.e. singers who NATURALLY can sing and express pretty well; but that also means that they may not be aware of what they’re doing wrong for certain parts of their singing. That’s why they can bump into issues like vocal polyps or damages (we hear of singers cancelling concerts cos of vocal issues )Billie is not really known for powerful or great vocals - she’s more famous for her songwriting craft and the emotions in her singing (not about singing techniques execution) - so be objective of vocal abilities (what she’s famous for) when you try to copy a singer’s singing.