When The Party’s Over has to be one of Billie Eilish’s most iconic music video, in my opinion, as it explicitly shows her growth leading to this video. This video reminded me so much of her first music video “Ocean Eyes”(2016), Where a young Billie Eilish, aged 14, lip dubbed her entire song while marking her cheeks with dark ink streaks from her stained fingers. To say this song’s MV is simply a more evolved version of Ocean Eyes (2016) is an understatement and I see it more as a sequel.
The music video begins with a very close up shot of a glass filled with black liquid. As the camera starts to pan out, we see the stark contrast of what is in the cup to the all-white surrounding. Billie is seated in front of the cup dressed in all white. The vibrancy of her dark blue colored hair, as well as her silver chains and jewelry, stand out against the monochromatic setting.
The camera angle is precise at 0.40 as it is below eye-level and leaning towards the left corner of the frame, placing Billie in a sort of profile -like position. We can see her seated in front of the glass filled with the dark substance, itching to drink it.
At 1.00 she finally grabs the cup to drink it and hesitantly drinks the entire glass, while the camera zooms into her face as she struggles to swallow the liquid. After exaggerated gulping, Billie begins to aggressively and over exaggeratively begins to flinch. At 1.49 she regains control of herself and stares straight into the camera lens.
She lifts her head and allows for a dark-colored tear to roll down the side of her left cheek as another dark tear rolls out of her right eye. At 2.00 she begins to lip-dub and singalong to her chorus as dark black streaks run profusely down her face. She continues to flinch and blinks her eyes aggressively as the tears pour down along her neck. Her eyes begin to darken as the pigmentation starts to take over her eyeballs. The corners of her mouth begin to leak the same liquid, and at 2.22, she begins to smudge the dark liquid all over her face. In the same motion as she did in Ocean Eyes. This time the dark substance had been ingested through her drinking it. It was coming from within her rather than it just being present superficially and on the surface-level.
The camera begins to pan downwards, slightly below Billie’s head revealing how the dark substance splattered across her chest, staining her white clothing.
The camera continues to pan downwards, towards the empty cup and the white platform that it is on. The closing shot depicts the bottom of the white platform in focus while the dark liquid continues spilling onto the ground in the foreground.
Ghida Dalloul 