Yeah, my cup overfloweth

Caroline Polachek - 'Billions' (Desire, I Want to Turn Into You - 2023)

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the closing tracks on some of the more critically acclaimed albums of 2023; I did say that one album was omitted from that run-down, and some of you would spot it.

Consistently finishing in many sites’ top fives such as Pitchfork, Paste, Consequence of Sound, Slant, PopMatters, A.V. Club, Under The Radar, DIY, The Guardian, The Skinny and many others, Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want To Turn Into You may not have topped as many lists as boygenius or Sufjan Stevens in the Anglosphere but it won over critics as the best of the year in Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, French, Belgian and Mexican publications.

The closing track, ‘Billions,’ was the second single from the album and a song that Polachek had played live in concert as far back as 2021. In fact, in that same year, a New Yorker profile detailed the song’s backstory. In creating the song, she reveals a process marked by spontaneity, inspiration, and a desire to capture a distinct emotional afterglow. The song’s inception was serendipitous; it began when producer Danny L Harle sent her a beat that another artist had rejected. Polachek immediately connected with this beat, finding it so compelling that it sparked an outpouring of creative energy. She described how the chords and structure of the song seemed to flow from her effortlessly, almost as if she was channelling the residual warmth and power of the sunshine.

The imagery in ‘Billions’ is vivid and psychedelic, featuring elements like a headless angel, an overflowing cup, and a pearl inside an oyster. These images, which came to Polachek spontaneously, indicate not only her lyrical style, blending abstract and evocative elements to create a rich, dreamlike tapestry - as she has done ever since she burst through as a part of Chairlift with ‘Bruises’ in 2008. In the piece, Polachek mentions she is looking to capture the afterglow of reopening, which is a rich enough seam for any artist to explore, but coming out from the lockdowns and restrictions of the pandemic, an actual reopening carries more than hits of renewal and new beginnings. The phrasing of overfloweth is not one that you hear very often in popular music, though it has been used before and that artist won’t surprise you.

Polachek’s experiences in the heat of the Mediterranean helped her to contrast with the structured narrative typical of contemporary pop songwriting, which she felt inclined to move away from. Instead, she was drawn to the fluid structures and dynamics in dance music and hip-hop, seeking to evoke a sense of coasting or flowing through her music.

That flowing property is something she mentioned in an interview with Apple Music;

‘Billions’ is last for all the same reasons that [opening track] ‘Welcome to My Island’ is first. It dissolves into total selflessness, whereas the album opens with total selfishness. The Beach Boys‘ ‘Surf’s Up’ is one of my favourite songs of all time. I cannot listen to it without sobbing. But the non-linear, spiritual, tumbling, open quality of that song was something that I wanted to bring into the song. But ‘Billions’ is really about pure sensuality, about all agenda falling away and just the gorgeous sensuality of existing in this world that’s so full of abundance, and so full of contradictions, humour and eroticism. It’s a cheeky sailboat trip through all these feelings. You know that feeling of when you’re driving a car to the beach, that first moment when you turn the corner and see the ocean spreading out in front of you? That’s what I wanted the ending of this album to feel like: The song goes very quiet all of a sudden, and then you see the water and the children’s choir comes in.

Lyrically, she paints a vivid tapestry of themes centred around fertility, abundance, and the complex interplay of sexuality and morality. The song's lyrics are filled with explicit allusions to reproduction, starting with the title, which nods to the high sperm count in ejaculations. This theme is further developed through references to salty flavours and headless angels. Polachek's reflections on femininity and morality play a significant role in the song. She delves into the idea of the "bad mother" figure, exploring this concept as a compelling yet often stigmatised aspect of femininity.

When writing this song, Polachek has possibly dwelled on the French modernist poetry of Charles Baudelaire, famous for his collected works Les Fleurs du Mal (literally, The Flowers of Evil). A Twitter user positioned this theory directly with Caroline and got pretty decent confirmation back¹.

Finally, another theme tackled is one of abundance in various forms, hence billions, not just in the biological sense but also in the everyday experiences of modern life—the constant flow of messages and information to the exchange of money.

The use of orchestral arrangements in ‘Billions’ adds a layer of grandeur to a track which retains a bouncy and breezy nature and isn’t overwhelmed by the power of the additional instrumentation and the children’s choir. The song's production balances the rich textures of strings with the intimacy of Polachek's voice, creating a grand and introspective soundscape which is as expressive in some parts as it is intimate in others.

1. Check out the likes for this tweet.