It’s accomplished through a solo part that pines for the major while the harmonies persist, wavelike, rising up insistently upon a minor shore. It’s accomplished through a rhythmic trick of sometimes adding a fifth bar to the four-bar phrases, so that harmonic indeterminacy lingers questioningly. The ambivalence of “ocean eyes” is accomplished with finesse: through chords that are equally comfortable in both keys through harmonization in thirds where one is unsure which voice to focus on through Eilish’s vocal precision. We see this in some other of Eilish’s most popular songs, like “idontwannabeyouanymore” and “when the party’s over” (from her new album), but it is far and away most pervasive in “ocean eyes.” It is simply both keys at once.Īmbivalence, in this sense, is one of the most striking aspects of Eilish’s music - the ability to inhabit, simultaneously, two different tonalities, and thus two different emotional valences. “ocean eyes” is not just in G major and not just in E minor, and it’s not just quickly changing between the two. At the same time, both descriptions feel incomplete. When I listen to “ocean eyes,” it seems correct to say that the song is in G major, and correct to say that it is in E minor (the relative key). The notes surround us, envelop us and hang, swirling, in the air.
The experience of tonal ambivalence in “ocean eyes” thus feels not like a journey through different feeling, but a steeping in the subtle notes of multiple feelings. If ambiguity is “not quite this, and not quite that,” and if flux is “this, quickly followed by that,” then ambivalence is “this and that,” all at the same time. Ambivalence, on the other hand, is an embrace of opposite and even seemingly opposing keys, harmonies, emotions.
Tonal ambiguity and tonal flux are harmonic motion, and they make us feel as if the music is shifting around - going someplace in particular, or circling around the same place. Matthew Passion, which begins in E-flat major but spends all of four seconds there before cascading through C minor and five other keys, then settling on B-flat major. Or the chorus, “ O man, bemoan your great sin,” from Bach’s St. The classical composers were masters of tonal ambiguity and flux consider the opening of Brahms’ first concerto, which spends an entire minute leaping between seven distinct keys before settling down in the home key of D minor. Lorde’s “Buzzcut Season,” for instance, exhibits tonal flux by switching nearly continuously between F minor and A-flat major, while Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” remains tonally ambiguous by circling around an A-major resolution for six minutes while never reaching the elusive tonic. While most pieces are unambiguously in one key most of the time, tonal flux and tonal ambiguity are nonetheless musical staples. Nor is it tonal flux, which would mean that the key changes continuously. Tonal ambivalence is not ambiguity, which would mean that the key is unclear. Billie Eilish’s “ocean eyes” is tonally ambivalent: It inhabits multiple keys at once, and in so doing captures the complex, conflicting emotional valences that make up our feelings.
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