December 8, 2019 – This week I heard a new song. It’s by an artist none of you are following, Billie Eilish — the 17-year-old who burst onto the scene this year, garnering award after award, several Grammy nominations, a number 1 album, the number 1 streaming artist nod, and this week, a commitment by Amazon for a $25 million project to follow her upcoming tour. I’ve featured her before, mostly to show the crazy that is her concerts — audience-singing to the point where you hear literally nothing but the audience. All of this buzz surrounding her is huge, but it was her new song, in fact, it was how I heard the song that was so striking for me. I heard it first on a pop station, then when the song finished, I switched to the alternative rock station and heard it again there. In fact, other of her songs have done that – played on both pop and alternative rock, and other songs from her March 2019 debut release seem to split between pop and alternative rock airplay. Perhaps that ability to play on both formats lends to her sales and streams; I’m not sure.

She is a duo with her brother, who used to star on the TV show Glee. Her parents are actors. She likes green nail polish and green hair. She doesn’t do drugs, and writes songs about that. She lives at home, somewhere in Los Angeles. This is all I know of her story. Her song Bad Guy was a radio favorite of mine for a bit, not so much now, but that’s the nature of catchy pop song. She has a song called When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go. I’m decades older than her, and I’ve always wanted to ask that question. I get a little bit of her color of green, you know envious, when someone comes up with a line like that, something I think I should have already written.

There was news of her this week, not really happy things for her, I’m sure. Lady Gaga fans called Billie Eilish out for turning her nose up to Gaga’s decade-old meat dress stunt. What, that’s new? I turned my nose up to that a decade ago. Apparently, Billie is a vegan, so, on the good side, some commentators sided with her. She also, in some interview, said she didn’t know who Van Halen was, prompting David Lee Roth to tweet to her, something about how the Beatles, Mark Twain, and Tchaikovsky came before her. David Lee Roth seemed to echo the sentiment from rock fans, Van Halen’s tough fans in particular, that she should know the music greats who came before her – a respect thing. But I’m not so sure.

We were all young once, and even the David Lee Roth’s of the world were mocked when they were young, making noise, they said of that music. I remember. Really, it’s only time that makes something a classic. It’s not age. David Lee Roth’s music was good, and he was young. So is Billie Eilish’s. And if we’re on the subject of books, let’s not forget that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 18. Seriously, stuff like that is enough to make me really, really green, 18 and you write Frankenstein? But my point is that Mark Twain isn’t the only example of a good writer, that an 18-year-old can be good too. Does she have her head in the sand as far as rock is concerned? Maybe, but she was born in 2001; what was the status of rock music then? And what has it done in her formative years?

I think, sometimes, we of these generations of the music that may or may not be dead or dying, I’m talking about rock here, get a bit defensive. We must be respected. We must be adored. And if were not, then those people who don’t respect us, who don’t know us, don’t know anything. But what would we have said to the older critics of David Lee Roth when he came out, or even Robert Plant; he was 18 when he burst onto the scene to create a frenzy, and not a lot of the elders were happy about them either.

Pete Townsend was interviewed recently about the upcoming album by The Who, which of course, radio isn’t playing. In the interview, he was asked about the current viability of rock music. His response was so very different from the defensiveness of other rockers, of rock fans generally. He said “rock is probably Taylor Swift; rock is, dare I say it, Adele and Ed Sheeran.” The comparison wasn’t about sales or popularity either. Townsend’s meaning was that these artists have a staying power, fitting within rock’s test of stamina. Interesting really. We want guitar-driven music to return. But I’m not sure that’s the fundamental core of what rock is … or was. Perhaps it’s just something new, something that resonates with one’s emotions. The artists Townsend mentioned do that for their fans, whether we like it or not.

Personally, I like emotional songs, emotional arrangements. And it doesn’t have to be guitar. I even saw a billboard on Sunset this week promoting some woman and her flute. I can’t remember her name, but I think I’d like to hear that. The flute is beautiful. Taking this back to the song I heard this week, from my first listen to Billie Eilish’s new song, I liked it. It’s emotional. It’s pretty. It made me want to listen to the words, to figure out what they mean. That’s rock, at least on some level. And I guess that’s why the pop song was on the alternative rock station also.

Oh and because I need to tie this story to my Christmas list – the list doesn’t have very much on it after all, I think what I’ll add to the list, inspired by this story, this feeling, is this: the ability for a new song to always hit me in some way, even if the song doesn’t have a guitar in it, and even if it’s written by someone born in a year of one of my classic vehicles, which really translates to something much more fundamental….

Item No. 3: to stay young at heart.