Billie Eilish is all over the place on her new album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, out today. She croons and murmur-raps. She careens from bossa nova to Euro-trance and — if you’ll believe me — creaky clown music. The shifts are so attention-grabbing that it might take you a second to register what she’s saying. Wait — is Billie Eilish singing about a gay love triangle?
The noteworthy lines are on the fifth track, “Wildflower,” on which Eilish sings to an unknown party about developing feelings for their ex: “She was your girl / You showed her the world / But fell out of love and you both let go / She was crying on my shoulder / All I could do was hold her / Only made us closer until July.” Later, she confesses: “Every time you touch me, I just wonder how she felt.”
A similar tension appears on “L’amour de Ma Vie” (“Love of My Life”): “You were the love of my life /… So you found her / Now go fall in love.” This song more strongly suggests that everyone involved in the triangle is a woman: “The girls on camera / Your girl’s a fan of … / It’s such a pity / We’re both so pretty.”
Who might these characters be? Though the timeline is a little off — Eilish presumably finished writing the album last year — the musician has been connected to two women lately. Earlier this year at Coachella, she was seen kissing both influencer Quen Blackwell (you might recognize her as one of the “internet ‘It’ girls” featured in Charli XCX’s “360” music video) and actress Odessa A’zion, the star of Netflix’s Grand Army (you might know her as Pamela Adlon’s daughter). Blackwell previously shared a TikTok of all three goofing around together in March. In a quick post-and-delete, Eilish also shared an impish photo of her touching tongues with A’zion last November. And the kicker? Well, Blackwell and A’zion were rumored to be dating in 2021.
Eilish’s sexual orientation has long been a source of speculation among fans. While she referred to herself as “straight as a ruler” early in her career, she told a different story in a Variety cover story last year, sharing that she was intimidated by — but attracted to — girls. Then, following up at a red-carpet event, she seemed nonchalant—“Oh, I guess I came out today” — but later accused Variety of outing her. She laid things out more clearly in last month’s roller-coaster Rolling Stone profile. “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand — until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.” You can hear more about that on the Hit Me Hard and Soft highlight, “Lunch.”
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