I created a remix of Billie Eilish’s Ocean Eyes (2016) with Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes. You can listen to my remix here:
To me, the two songs are contrasting takes on the transformative destiny of a new romance. Where Peter Gabriel finds a promising, new order forming, Billie Eilish worries it’s a Siren song portending eventual doom.
I imagine this contrast best, with each singer at a roaring campfire, staring into his/her signficant other’s eyes. The eyes of Peter Gabriel’s lover reflect his past troubles burning, with new possibility confidently emerging from the ashes. Billie Eilish finds her present self sucked into the “Ocean Eyes”, and can’t un-see “napalm skies” on the horizon if she ever loses the love.
In the short-term, both outlooks are self-fulfilling. However, as the romance matures, my sense is a the relationship must seek both. Unrelenting “Boom-Box scene” romance (and its accompanying expectations) could lead to burn-out from day-to-day life. Unrelenting worry of impending loss of self drowns the joy and spontaneity. Perhaps one is the antidote to the other’s poisoness excesses.