There’s needy, and then there’s just honest. And you can always count on the recording artist known as Billy the Kid to be honest. On her new single, “Fall in Love with Me, Please” — her second as part of the trio Billy the Kid & Your Funeral — the straight-shooting Billy Pettinger places a bid for affection that’s as plainspoken as it is heartbreaking.
Making her own unique contribution to the “where is my man?” school of lonely hearts club songcraft, the Vancouver-born, Detroit-based Billy establishes that she, too, has been around the world and can’t find her baby—“the world” in this context extending from the neighborhood bar to the faces of past partners she now worries might have included the proverbial one that got away. It’s on the chorus, though, that the depths of her desperation truly become known:
I made a shirt
That said “Fall In Love With Me”
I took an ad out in the obituaries
Just in case you like to frequent
Places as sad as some of the nights I’ve had
It’s a bracing sentiment, all right, and the music doesn’t obscure it one iota. The sparse, folkified pop-rock laid down by Billy and her bandmates Atom Willard (Angels & Airwaves, Alkaline Trio) and Marc Jacob Hudson (Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers) graciously hangs back so every syllable of the gently pleading vocal can tug at your sleeve and your heartstrings.
Oh, and that bit about the obituaries? It’s no mere melodrama. The Valentine’s Day 2024 release of “Fall in Love with Me, Please” came almost nine years to the day Pettinger woke up in a hospital bed after swallowing the entire contents of her medicine cabinet over seemingly insurmountable pressures—including green-card troubles and a lack of support from her then-label. Fortunately, she not only survived but thrived, thanks to the support of fans on crowdfunding platforms like Patreon and her own indomitable work ethic.
A genuinely prolific artist, Pettinger has released numerous albums over the past two decades under a variety of monikers: her real name, Billy the Kid, Billy and the Lost Boys, Billy the Kid & the South Side Boys and now Billy the Kid & Your Funeral. She’s also a big fan of “31 songs in 31 days” writing and recording challenges, including one that yielded the material for her 2021 album, There Is Only Right Now.
The new single, in fact, dropped just two weeks after the release of the new band’s debut track, “Fallout.” At the same time, Pettinger has been busy making videos, including a clip for “Fall in Love with Me, Please” that uses the adorable canine PizzaFox AnkleSox to sell its message that in matters of the heart, it’s better to adopt than shop.
Billy and the boys have a full-length album coming in October whose title, I Have to Do This, neatly sums up her seemingly endless appetite for self-direction. Maybe getting a second chance at life renews your focus, but truth be told, she never had much of an “off” switch to begin with. She’s working hard to make you love her, so maybe it’s time to just give in. “Please.”
