Billie Eilish is coming with her new 2nd album "Happier Than Ever"!

The music world is less than a week away from the arrival of Billie Eilish’s second album, Happier Than Ever, which she’s been working on since the beginning of 2020. Now that the album’s just around the corner, Eilish sat down for an interview with the LA Times, in which she detailed a struggle she had while writing a song for the album.

Billie Eilish has had an incredible rise over the last few years. Releasing her debut album When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go? in 2019, the young singer-songwriter followed that up very quickly with a second album, Happier Than Ever, that’s due to drop later this week. With plenty of singles from the record already out in the universe, older hits like “Therefore I Am” and “My Future” have given way to new fan favorites like “Your Power” and my personal choice, “Lost Cause.”

In the meantime, Billie has been on something of a press tear, covering Vogue and breaking Instagram records while she’s at it, and sitting down for an in-depth video interview with Vevo. Speaking on the sound and feel of the record, she let her fans know that one of the major inspirations for the album was Frank Sinatra, which might be why her ideal vision of how listeners encounter the music for the first time is a little bit old school, too.

“You can listen however you want,” she began. “But I would love — if your car has nice speakers, or your friend’s car has nice speakers — it’s raining, you’re in a nice car with a good sound system. Turn it up, and just recline and close your eyes, and listen. That’s what I hope people will do. But listen however you want, it’s up to you.”

The news also hit today that Happier Than Ever has become the most pre-added album in Apple Music history with over a million pre-adds. So it looks like this album is shaping up to be just as successful as her last one. Now, who is going to let me borrow their nice car with great speakers for my first listen?

We’re down to just a couple days until Billie releases her second project, Happier Than Ever, and by now it’s pretty clear that the album is a huge pivot from her initial sound. In a recent interview with Vevo, the thoughtful superstar gave some insight as to why that shift happened. She said that after the success of her first album, and all the anxiety that she felt while writing her debut, the goal with this album was to make something that felt timeless.

She was speaking about “Getting Older,” which is about her own personal struggles. “I’ve had some trauma / Did things I didn’t wanna,” she sings on the unreleased song. “Was too afraid to tell ya / But now I think it’s time.” Eilish then revealed that she was reluctant to go so personal, worried that fans would “know everything about my life somehow.”

She also said she keeps some things close to the vest. “I have experienced some stuff that I have never spoken about, and I don’t want to at all…I don’t want to f*cking talk about it,” she said. “I don’t want to tell anyone, let alone the entire internet. It’s embarrassing to go through stuff like that. It’s why a lot of women and men — but especially women — don’t tell anyone when they’re going through it.” She added, “But at the same time…even though I haven’t really done anything for [the #MeToo movement], it’s really important that young women know that it can happen to anyone. Just being taken advantage of.”

“I wanted to make a very timeless record,” she explained. “That wasn’t just timeless in terms of what other people thought, but really just timeless for myself. I gathered a lot of inspiration from a lot of older artists that I grew up loving. Mostly Julie London, and a lot of Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee — and then, the songs on the album are all over the place. Very versatile, and different to one another, but also very cohesive. Which is a big goal for me.”

Well, considering pop music has been a lot more influenced by the trap beats of Atlanta than the jazz standards of Sinatra as late, it might be Billie who causes a shift in culture with this release. We’ll have to wait and see the reaction when the full record drops next week.