Photo by Xavi Torrent/WireImage
James Blake recently covered Billie Eilish’s “when the party’s over" after praising the teenage singer in The Fader earlier this year. During a recent interview with Variety, the English musician shared additional thoughts about Eilish’s music and even mentioned her brother FINNEAS‘ production in the same breath as Kanye West’s sparse album, Yeezus.
After sharing that Eilish was one of his most-listened artists on Spotify, Blake said he waited for six months to check out her debut album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?, to avoid being swayed by the hype around it. When Blake did finally get around to the record, he was impressed by his friend FINNEAS' production—particularly on the third single, “bury a friend.”
“It’s so sparsely produced, and they gate the vocals so you can’t hear any noise—when a vocal goes out there’s just complete silence. I don’t know whether that was conscious, but I found it really fascinating,” Blake explained. “‘bury a friend’ was one of the most interestingly produced things I’ve heard since [Kanye West’s] Yeezus, which I think was some influence.”
Blake isn’t the first person to note similarities between “bury a friend” and Yeezus. Follow the single’s release, Billboard wrote that its beat “jostles, quakes, and screeches like a Yeezus outtake.”
Kanye released Yeezus in 2013 to a mixed public response after bringing in pioneering producer Rick Rubin to help strip down the album’s production and reduce the record to 10 tracks. The album received critical acclaim, with many reviews pointing to its minimalist production and warped samples.
Elsewhere in the interview, Blake praised Eilish’s most recent single. “They’re very thoughtful people,” he said about the siblings. “With the new one, ‘everything i wanted,’ it’s so interesting how they put it out after [their hit album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?] to talk about what it’s like to rocket to that kind of success and get everything you wanted, and actually have it exacerbate your nightmares. I think the novelty of fame wears off quickly.”
Read the full James Blake Variety interview here, and catch up on all the lyrics to Billie Eilish’s “bury a friend” on Genius now.
