Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This chapter analyzes the representation of depression in Billie Eilish’s music and reception as reflective of the statistical prevalence of clinical depression among young people in the West and its associated social inequalities, and widespread cultural depathologization of depression. By claiming and musicalizing depression amid a polarizing reception, Eilish builds on a musical legacy of feminine psychological disturbance, challenging the stigmatization of “madness” in women and cultural panic over the prevalence of depression among Generation Z. Her music demystifies an invisible inner turmoil that her fans identify as “depression,” just as they frame her signature whisper singing as a coherent marker of and antidote for depression. Links between Eilish’s voice and the feminized auditory triggers of ASMR and the immersive, solitary listening characteristic of headphone and earbud use strengthen her music’s appeal as a form of “mood regulation.” Ultimately, Eilish’s voice and body are the locus onto which fans and detractors project fantasies and anxieties about the generational, gendered, and racial dynamics of depression that often exceed the singer’s stated aims as well as clinical definitions of depression. In this chapter, Jessica A. Holmes approaches the musicalization of depression in pop as a diverse aesthetic category she terms “the musical vernacular of depression” that encompasses distinct semantic practices, stylistic conventions, and affective cultures as it blurs a clinical understanding of depression with a generational sensibility that is unbounded by diagnosis and pathology. Billie is among a generation of musicians who are transforming how young people conceive of, communicate, and tend to their mental health.</jats:p>