Billie Eilish is back, blonde, and bringing fresh new tunes. On Wednesday (June 2), the 19-year-old pop star released the latest single off her forthcoming album Happier Than Ever, “Lost Cause.”
The track is a low-key empowerment anthem in the vein of TLC’s “No Scrubs” or Dua Lipa’s “New Rules,” in which Eilish tells off a would-be partner who “ain’t nothing but a lost cause,” as the refrain asserts. “I know you think you’re such an outlaw / But you got no job,” she repeats in her signature whisper-like vocals over a slow-moving, jazz-tinged beat.
“Lost Cause” dropped with a corresponding music video, where Eilish is joined in a Los Angeles mansion by a group of beige or blue sleepwear-clad backup dancers. The crew twerks on nightstands, eats Lay’s potato chips, and straddles a game of Twister, all while mouthing the lyrics to the song, which was co-written by Eilish and her brother Finneas. The self-directed visual reads like a gossipy pajama party — no bum boys allowed.
The fourth single off Eilish’s forthcoming album Happier Than Ever, which is out July 30 via Darkroom/Interscope Records, “Lost Cause” grapples with similar themes as other recent releases. On this track as on the dreamy “My Future,” the quippy tell-off “Therefore I Am,” and the vulnerable “Your Power,” Eilish is asserting her independence outside relationships and institutions.
And she’s happier than ever doing so. “THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES,” she wrote on Instagram of “Lost Cause” the day ahead of its release. “AHHHHHHHH I CANT WAIT FOR YOU TO SEEE.” Happier Than Ever will be her sophomore album, following her Grammy-winning debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
