Billie Eilish's third studio album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, is out today, with intimate details about the 22-year-old's personal life. Throughout the album, she alludes to her (now public) queerness, body image and her last public relationship with singer, Jesse Rutherford.
Track five on the album is only song on the album that feels obviously pointed toward her ex-boyfriend, although Rutherford isn't the main character of the lyrics.
Billie and Jesse dated (publicly) for about seven months between 2022 and 2023, sparking up some side eyes and murmurs about their age difference: Rutherford is 10 years Eilish's senior, and she was only 21 at the time they started dating. Regardless, Eilish spoke highly of Rutherford in interviews, and defended herself by talking about how happy she was.
But as it turns out, behind the joy of the seven-month relationship, she also felt a twinge of guilt.
Prior to his relationship with Billie, Jesse Rutherford dated influencer and business-owner, Devon Lee Carlson for over six years. The two eventually split in 2021, seemingly amicably, but it was a huge change for both parties, not to mention their fans who claimed that "love was dead" now that the power couple had split. When Devon went on the Call Her Daddy podcast months later, she said, "Obviously I was in a relationship for a very long time, a public relationship and we had the most mutual breakup ever and we still are totally chill and friends, and supportive of each other and whatever. But then I was like ‘Holy f*ck I’m single!’ for the first time in my entire life."
Now back to the song--if we can speculate that the song is about Jessie, Devon and Billie, then we know they all had a solid friendship prior to the breakup. According to the lyrics in "Wildflower," Devon would come to lean on Billie for support when her relationship with Jesse ended: "You fell out of love and you both let go/She was cryin' on my shoulder/All I could do was hold her."
Billie continues, now talking to the recipient of the song (Jesse), stating that she knows he loves her and she wants to continue on, but she can't help but feel guilty for dating her friends' ex: "I see her in the back of my mind all the time/Feels like a fever, like I'm burning alive, like a sign/Did I cross the line?"
It's pretty obvious that Billie is talking about feeling guilty over dating Devon's ex, but Billie is also happy and so is he. Devon and Billie never had any kind of public falling out over the ordeal, but it's hard to know if there were ever hard feelings behind the scenes. Maybe I'm making a big assumption about a celebrity who I don't know, but I can't imagine that Billie wouldn't get permission from Devon to date Jesse in the first place.
It seems that after the breakup, everything settled back down. Billie still speaks highly of Jesse and their amicable breakup, and she was spotted arm-in-arm with Devon at Kendall Jenner's 2023 Halloween party, so their friendship is obviously still in tact.
With all the publicity around this situation, it's actually nice to have "Wildflower" and get a little context into the situation--that is, if any of speculation about the song is true. It's hard to deny though, when Devon Lee Carlson's phone case brand is called Wildflower Cases.