Caroline Polachek Surrenders to the Sublime on Esoteric Single ‘Billions’

Caroline Polachek has shared her new single, “Billions” — a trip-hop inspired, hallucinogenic epic that finds the songwriter expanding upon the inventive production style perfected on her critically acclaimed 2019 album, Pang.

The song, a staple from the “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” singer’s 2021 live shows, was written and produced by Polachek alongside Danny L. Harle and features a children’s chorus performed by London’s renowned Trinity Choir. Its release was accompanied by a surrealist video which finds Polachek indulging in a variety of decadent activities — picking grapes, bathing, pouring wine — before reading a mysterious book to a group of children.

Polachek’s lyrics are ambling, yet visually evocative throughout the track. Against a backdrop of icy beats and gentle, atmospheric coos, she sings of “sexting sonnets under the tables,” “headless angels” — and somehow manages to work “cornucopeiac,” a delightful linguistic treat, seamlessly into her dreamlike prose.

“The overabundance of this world overwhelms me,” Polachek said in a statement accompanying the song’s release. “Sometimes it seems like ultimate tragedy, the earth being pillaged and destroyed for it. Sometimes it seems pre-human, beyond morality, sublime. I don’t pick sides, I just live here, with you. How does it feel, being so rich?”

“Billions” marks Polachek’s first release of original material since 2021’s “Bunny Is A Rider” and follows “New Shapes,” her recent collaboration with Charli XCX and Christine and the Queens from Charli XCX’s upcoming album, Crash.

Polachek is currently supporting Dua Lipa on the British pop singer’s Future Nostalgia tour and is also scheduled to make appearances during both weekends of this year’s Coachella festival.