As Victoria Wasylak broke down in yesterday’s live review, the impact of Billie Eilish is hard to overestimate. While the new alt-pop queen is crashing mainstream culture and captivating sold-out arenas one night at a time, her music is also inspiring direct reactions, too. The latest comes from Ocean Tisdall, a rising Irish artist who today (February 22) drops the visual for his latest single, “White Lies.” View it below.
“‘White Lies’ is one of those records that just came out like word vomit!” Tisdall writes on YouTube. “I remember listening to Billie Eilish’s ‘Ocean Eyes’ for the first time whilst going through my own break up and being smacked in the face with an overwhelming sense of ‘Fuck I relate to these lyrics soo much’, especially because my ex had the most endearing blue eyes but was a sucker for those white lies. When writing this record, myself and my co-writer Seven just kept saying ‘Why did Billie get it so damn right?’ and that ended up being the driving lyric that started the whole writing process.”
Taking inspiration from both Billie Eilish and a failed relationship is so very 2022. Undeterred, the video for “White Lies” captures the raw, unnerving nature of the confessional pop track, and was filmed through a family affair in Tisdall’s homeland.
“The music video for ‘White Lies’ was an interesting one, we shot this in my great uncle’s abandoned run-down house in Ireland and it was actually the same house where we had written the ‘White Lies’ record previously so it definitely felt very full circle,” he adds. “Picture this — me, my director, a camera guy, my friend holding a light, my sister screaming ‘yassss’ and my little brother with a grave digger! haha That’s all i’m saying, you’ll have to watch the video to find out how it all came together.”
Let’s do just that, yeah.