“Goodbye” by Billie Eilish

On standard editions of Billie Eilish’s first studio album (When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go), this track serves as the final song.  As such, the last three songs on the playlist are supposed to read as a sentence – “Listen before I go”, “I love you”, “goodbye”.

You can view the lyrics, alternate interprations and sheet music for Billie Eilish's Goodbye at Lyrics.org.

Along the same vein, this track features a similar form of wordplay. Apart from a brief intro, the song only consists of a singular verse. And that verse is made up of lyrics contained in the first lines of each song on the album that preceded “Goodbye” in reverse order.  When read in the order they are presented in (last track to first), these lyrics don’t appear to have any clear-cohesive meaning. However, if they are read backwards (first track to last), as in putting the last line of the verse first and the first line last, they make a bit more sense. Yet it is never specified that the verse is supposed to be read in reverse.

Lyrics of "Goodbye"

The only clearly coherent part of the song is the intro, in which Eilish states “please, please don’t leave me be”, which can be deemed as a climax to the album in its entirety.  As such, “Goodbye” as a track (which clocking in at just under two minutes is the second-shortest song on When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go) is probably intended more than anything to serve more as an outro to the entire project rather than an independent track.

4 Responses

  1. CBEB says:

    This is a good explanation

  2. awesome says:

    omg wow that is so awesome! Billie is so creative and smart.

  3. Anonymous says:

    I still don’t understand. Great idea, tho, Bil!

  4. BuzzerBoy says:

    I’m pretty sure that the whole album is about a person about to commit suicide and talking to there lover. Made me cry. Poor billie.

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