Listen Close #4 'everything i wanted' by Billie Eilish

Listen Close is a weekly feature where I take a long hard listen to a song that really grabbed my ears. I think about which elements of the mix have got me so interested and try to understand how and why they work, as well as how they can give me a better perspective on my own productions.

​Welcome back to Listen Close, this week I’ve found myself returning to Billie Eilish’s stand-alone single ‘everything i wanted’, released on the 16th of November 2019. The song was produced by Billie’s brother and frequent collaborator Finneas O’Connell, mixed by Rob Kinelski and mastered by John Greenham.
 
You can stream the song from Apple, Spotify as well as Tidal, where I also found a detailed list of the track’s credits.
 
‘everything i wanted’ is an intimate reflection on Eilish’s new-found fame after the breakout success of her debut album ‘WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?’, released back in March 2019.  I generally like to listen to albums or EPs in full, but I’ve been returning to this one-off track despite it not fitting into a larger release. The production and mix really enhance the confessional nature of the lyrics and the sense of intimacy in the performance. This has helped etch a solid idea of what the song is in my memory, and there’s a few one-off ‘mix moments’ that quickly spring to mind when thinking about the song. 
 
The song sets the scene with a heavily affected piano part, which has an underwater like quality to it, this is quickly joined by a distant synth sound (00:06) and then the lead vocal (00:16).  As the first verse progresses, the arrangement is steadily built up with backing vocals (00:30), kick drum (00:32), more synthesiser parts (00:34) and electronic percussion (00:40). The first chorus (01:20) introduces a thick subby synth bass line and many more layers of vocal to increase the overall size of the track. From here on, the track drops and builds back these elements in varying ways to keep the audible landscape shifting and holding our attention. Throughout all this, the mix maintains that Billie’s voice is the most important element and that direct connection to the listener is essential. 
 
This prioritisation is happening right from the beginning of the song. The initial piano sound we hear is severely limited in its frequency range, it is focused between 150Hz to 1kHz, rolling off steeply above and below this window, nothing exists below 40Hz and more crucially above 2kHz. This means that when the vocal enters it instantly gets to excite your ear with a huge amount of ‘new’ frequencies.

​This is immensely satisfying for our brains but also makes sure that we perceive the vocal as close to us. Out in the real world we instinctively know that as a sound gets further away it’s high frequency content is lessened and that the opposite is also true. If someone whispers in your ear (which is certainly how the vocals of this song can feel on headphones) you expect it to be a much brighter and more detailed sound than someone talking on the other side of a room to us. 
 
This effect is also emphasised in the amount of reverb used. The piano and synth parts throughout have a much lower direct to reverberant ratio than the vocals, which helps inform your brain that the vocal is closer still. 
 
 
This high frequency prioritisation of the vocal continues even as the song adds more and more elements. The electronic kick drum sound is low and thudding, it lacks the high midrange ‘click’ that is often desired to help it punch through the mix. While this approach preserves precious high mid space for the vocal, it does mean that on smaller playback systems the rhythmic support of the kick would be lost. To counteract this the producer uses the kick drum as the key input for a heavy side-chain compression effect on the other instruments (listen to the rhythmic pulsing of the piano in the intro to hear this effect in isolation). This allows the rhythm of the kick to be imprinted on the rest of the track, resulting in the beat still being ‘felt’ even if the kick itself is not clearly audible. 
 
The synth parts are treated similarly to the piano, with their high end restricted and a good dose of reverb to push them back away from the vocal sound. Other percussive elements are afforded a slightly more midrange-focused sound, although the claps remain much duller than you might expect from a modern pop production. 
 
Keeping the high frequency content of the song so focussed on the lead vocal through out the intro and verse sections is a clever way for the production to connect you to Billie’s voice and lyrics, but it also give the track a great way to expand once it arrives at the choruses.
 
With the brief exceptions of the wide doubled lead vocal sound in the verse and pre-chorus (‘might have been a nightmare’ 00:31, ‘right there’ 00:56, etc) the vocals and therefore high frequencies are central in the mix. As the chorus kicks in, we are treated to a large amount of additional vocal layers that spread across the entire stereo image, adding their own brightness to the sides of the mix and giving the track a really satisfying feeling of opening out and getting bigger. 

Listening In Context

When working on our own mixes, and when trying to understand someone else’s, it’s hugely important to have a sense of the context the mix exists in and was created out of. By learning more about the intentions of the artist we can make better decisions. For example, gaining a deeper understanding of the lyrics can help pinpoint where production choices, such as effects or recording additional parts can help emphasise important phrases. 
 
This process can also be reverse engineered when listening to a production to discover why certain decisions were made. In the case of ‘everything i wanted’ doing a little bit of wider research turned up this article from Billboard, which pulls some quotes from a more expansive New York Times profile to give some specific context for this song. 
 
From the articles it becomes clear that the ‘you’, from the lyric "and you say" that frames the chorus, is Billie’s brother Finneas. Knowing this makes the decision to include his vocals in the chorus much more of an obvious choice.
 
The lyrics “Thought I could fly/ So I stepped off the Golden” are alluding to a hypothetical suicide attempt, by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge into the water below it. It seems that this, along with the lyrics “But my head was underwater” have informed the production to take on ‘watery’ sonic characteristics. The rolled-off high end in the instrumental is reminiscent of how things sound when your ears are submerged and the synth and effects choices reinforce this feeling.

​Ultimately the goal of the mixing stage is to make sure that the parts present in the production do in fact ‘mix’ together in a way that gets across the intentions of the song. Using EQ so deliberately to separate the vocal from the rest of the elements could potentially cause issues with this objective, but the producer and mixer (and potentially the mastering engineer) have deployed a particular tool to make sure that disparate elements co-exist in the ‘world’ of the mix.
 
The delicate vocal and rounded off piano sound present ‘everything i wanted’ as having a soft and gentle overall sound, but in fact some form of distortion has been added to almost every sound in the mix.
 
Ranging from the pumping compressor mangling the piano, to the gnarly overdrive on the sub bass in the chorus (and a little more obviously in the middle eight at 03:21). The combination of all this distortion pushes the sounds into a common sonic area, helping them gel together nicely. 
 
Pushing the distortion to extremes on the more band-limited parts of the mix also adds harmonic content further up the spectrum, extending them out of their perceived frequency range and helping them to smoothly blend with the other elements. This technique allows a more subtle result than perhaps boosting with an EQ or doubling with a whole new part might have done. 
 
Take the kick drum for example; the majority of its frequency content is centred at roughly 63Hz, giving it a low, boomy quality that keeps it well out the way of the vocal. Listening at 00:36 we hear the kick drum clearly has a crunching distortion artefact sitting at a much higher frequency, which allows it to subtly overlap with the vocal and piano sounds, resulting it a more cohesive mix. 
 
 
‘everything i wanted’ is a gorgeous sounding mix that very deliberately creates a clear space in the frequency spectrum for it’s lead vocal performance, while ensuring that the overall mix still blends together in a warm and inviting way. It’s really satisfying to hear a track that presents a bold sonic idea, but does so in such a way that it isn’t overbearing or even particularly obvious on a first listen.

While that core concept certainly goes a long way to making a memorable mix, the song also features some really lovely one-off moments and tricks that keep it feeling contemporary and interesting throughout its run time. 

---

Stray observations
 

• At 00:21 the title of the song is sung and nicely emphasised by a deep reverb.
• The pulsing 1kHz focused synth that arrives at 00:41 has a definite submarine sonar vibe.
• The word ‘underwater’ at 01:57 feels like it’s been submerged as the high end rolls off and the reverb blooms out. 
• There are some beautiful delay throws on BV lines at 00:42 ‘Fly’ and 00:52 ‘Cry’.
• The choruses are given an extra lift by a Mellotron style pad sound that enters alongside the BVs.
• The band limited intro and outro sections have the added benefit of resetting the listener’s ears from whatever they have heard previously and for whatever is coming up next. Particularly important for a stand-alone single. 

---

​Further Listening
 
To hear some more bold production choices from Billie and Finneas, but with a very different mood, check out ‘bury a friend’ from the album ‘WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?’.
 
To hear another great vocal focussed mix from Rob Kinselski give ‘Tough On Myself’ by King Princess a listen.

---

​Thanks for listening along with me; I would love to hear your thoughts on the track in the comments below, are there any songs you would recommend that separate their vocal in a similar way? Or any other tracks that have a watery feel?