Billie Eilish is a creation of her own making, gaining fame at lightning speed with no signs
of slowing down.
But has the songstress always been larger than life?
And is she really as original as she seems?
This is the stunning transformation of Billie Eilish.
Eilish's origin story began in 2001 in Highland Park, Los Angeles, but if it sounds like she
had a glam upbringing, she didn't.
She told NME,
"Highland Park has become popular now but growing up there, it was not like that at
all.
There were gunshots and s---, y'know, it was really sketchy."
Eilish still calls Highland Park home and she's seen her neighborhood go through enormous
changes, telling Coupe de Main,
"It's huge now, and kinda popping, which is weird.
I think it's really cute.
It's very homely, very comfortable."
One thing's certain about Eilish, is that music's in her DNA.
In her earliest memories growing up, she was always making noise.
She told Paper magazine,
"I've been singing since I was a tiny child.
I learned ukulele and piano on my own, my dad taught me some.
I've been in a choir since I was 8-years-old, so that's where I learned my technique and
how to not ruin my voice."
"I mean, Billie was already singing and she had this beautiful voice."
"I don't wanna live in a world without you."
Just as Eilish was practically born singing, she's also always been sure she was destined
to be a musician.
She said,
"I've always known that singing, writing music and performing is what I've wanted to do.
So I'm glad that it's happening."
There would be no Billie Eilish without her parents, Maggie Baird and Patrick O'Connell,
two working actors who moved from New York to settle in Highland Park.
"My mom is the main thing I have to thank.
The main person that I have to thank for everything."
Along with her brother Finneas O'Connell, Eilish speaks of her homeschooled upbringing
fondly, telling Ssence,
"When I see movies set in summertime, that's what my life was like all the time, but it
doesn't mean I didn't learn.
My mom would cook and she'd be like, 'How much goes into this?'
And that's how we learned."
Eilish and her brother Finneas have always had a good relationship.
She revealed to Coupe de Main,
"Me and Finneas have always had a bond.
We've always had a connection, especially with music."
"Me and him were both doing the same thing in the same house and were just like, 'We
live three feet away from each other, why don't we do this together?'"
Given that Finneas was the older sibling, Eilish looked up to him and would strive to
make music that was just as good as his, and their mom's.
She added,
"The whole time I've written any music, since my mom is also a songwriter, and she taught
me how to write songs, I've always had a standard that is really, really high.
I have to be as good as them."
Eilish still works with Finneas as her main creative collaborator.
"We've written and recorded, like, 90 percent of everything we've ever made in my bedroom
in my parents' house."
Believe it or not, Eilish was pursuing something other than music for a long time: dance.
She loved it passionately and savored the emotional outlet that it gave her, until unfortunate
circumstances finally closed the door.
She told Coupe de Main,
"Dance was always my way of doing that, and then I got injured, and then injured again,
which completely took me out of dance.
That was horrible, horrible, horrible."
But Eilish found a silver lining amidst the embers of the fallout: she began to focus
on music in earnest, which is how her first song "Ocean Eyes" was born when she was just
13.
She told V Magazine,
"That song happened because one of my dance teachers knows that I sing and write with
my brother.
He asked if we could do a song for one of the dances."
Thus, the stars began to align, and an unforgettable ballad was born.
Plenty of musicians know how it goes: you create a song or a video and upload it to
YouTube, Bandcamp, or Soundcloud, where it gets a stream here and there…but then it
dies a little death, and you eventually forget all about it.
And that's what Eilish expected in 2015 when she and her brother uploaded "Ocean Eyes"
onto Soundcloud.
She told Paper magazine,
"We put it up on Soundcloud with a download link for free.
We were just using it to send a link to my dance teacher and had no expectations for
it."
It became evident pretty quickly that the song was destined to be a hit.
She remembered,
"Overnight it got a thousand plays and we were like, 'We made it.
We don't need to go any further.'"
But the pair sure didn't stop there.
The song quickly went viral, garnering millions of streams and effectively launching Eilish's
career.
It didn't take long after the success of "Ocean Eyes" for record companies to start taking
notice of Eilish, even though she was still very young.
In the summer of 2016, Eilish made it official when she signed with Darkroom, a boutique
label helmed by Justin Lubliner, who was only in his late 20s at the time.
Darkroom might not sound so familiar, but it functions in a partnership with the famed
Interscope Records, which was founded in the late '90s and is known for its insanely talented
roster, with artists like Dr. Dre, Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Kendrick Lamar.
CEO of Interscope Records, John Janick, recognized the potential in Eilish from the beginning,
telling the New York Times,
"Her sense of style, how she thinks, the way she talks, everything about her was just different.
She had such a strong point of view, especially for being 14 years old."
Clearly that turned out to be the right move for the label, and Eilish began her meteoric
rise to where she is today.
Once Eilish was comfortably signed with a record label, it was time to figure out the
next steps.
Perhaps the conventional thing would have been to market "Ocean Eyes" as a hit single
to radio audiences, but Brandon Goodman, one of Eilish's managers, had a different approach.
He told the Times,
"We didn't want it to be about a song.
We never wanted anything to be bigger than Billie the artist."
So instead, Eilish got to work on an EP, which, as we know now, was definitely the right way
to go.
"He said my EP was a huge success.
It totally was not.
But okay.
It wasn't not a huge success, it just wasn't a huge success."
By the summer of 2017, her tracks were ready to be released to the world, bearing a title
perfectly matched to Eilish's sensibilities.
She told Ssence,
"My EP is called Don't Smile at Me for a lot of reasons, but one of them would be when
[someone tells you], 'Smile.
Why aren't you smiling?
It's so much more beautiful when you smile.'
I'm not gonna look like anybody except what I am.
I want to impress myself."
If you've never seen Eilish and have only heard her songs, you're missing out on her
style, which is completely her own.
She's often seen sporting bold, bright colors on Instagram, and she doesn't shy away from
luxury labels.
She's also not afraid to make a statement.
Eilish also doesn't mind that her outfits call attention to herself.
And actually, she enjoys it.
She told Luxury Insider,
"I just like to be looked at.
I always wanted to wear whatever I wanted to wear.
No one has ever told me otherwise even when I was a kid.
Clothing is my safety net, it's like my security guard."
"Is, it kind of gives nobody the opportunity to judge what your body looks like."
One thing that's especially interesting about Eilish is her confidence in other teens, even
when people tell her that there are things she can't understand because she's too young.
She told NME,
"Bro, teenagers know more about the country that we're living in right now than anybody."
And given how many young activists are currently making their voices heard, Eilish might be
onto something.
That's why Eilish joined Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2018 in a push to register
young people to vote.
"Hey I'm Billie Eilish."
"And I'm Eric Garcetti."
She told NME,
"The world is ending, and I honestly don't understand the law that says you have to be
older to vote, because they're going to die soon, and we'll have to deal with it.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
But to see young people taking part in peaceful protests and not obeying is beautiful."
"See you on election day."
Eilish finally dropped her long-awaited debut full-length album in March 2019.
Titled When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? it's the culmination of three years of work
from Eilish and her brother, who worked on it in his bedroom studio.
"Anything, I think, sometimes I'll have a dream, where it's, like, I can't explain it,
so I kinda just draw exactly I'm thinking."
Eilish was nervous just before the release, admitting to Billboard,
"I didn't want the world to be able to tell me how they feel about this thing I love.
But the response has been crazy."
The success of the album is not lost on Eilish, who knows that this is her moment.
She said,
"I'm in the good old days right now.
Who knows if this is my peak and then I die or some s---?
Or my career dies, and I go away, and no one cares.
Or it gets crazier."
In 2019, Eilish got to do what so many artists dream about, when she played a full set at
Coachella.
"Everybody knows what Coachella is.
Even if you don't care about music, you know."
It was only two weeks after her debut album landed at No. 1. on the Billboard 200, and
it was a moment her fans anxiously awaited.
"This is the first show I'm doing any of the songs that just came out.
We made this album to do live."
But the night before, Eilish was still processing all of the emotions that come with performing
her set.
She confessed to Billboard,
"Everything that's being said about me and what I've created, I'm playing Coachella tomorrow
and I'm doing this and I'm doing that, I keep having to think of it like I'm not me, because
it is just a name."
But, of course, Eilish crushed it.
Given her success, she's been able to develop relationships with other celebs she's admired.
She said,
"I'm at this place where I kind of know all of the people that I'm a fan of.
It's very weird."
It's quite obvious to anyone who's seen Eilish that she has model good looks.
With her haunting blue eyes and porcelain skin, Eilish radiates a beauty and a confidence
all her own.
But in May 2019, Eilish got candid in a commercial for Calvin Klein, sharing the reason she always
wears baggy clothing.
She said,
"I never want the world to know everything about me.
I mean, that's why I wear big, baggy clothes."
She then went deep, adding,
"Nobody can have an opinion because they haven't seen what's underneath."
It was possibly one of the most relatable things that has ever been spoken about, for
women.
And while her Instagram page still garners comments from haters, Eilish knows they're
just trolls.
She told NME,
"You wouldn't believe the s--- people say about me.
It's f---ing funny though, because who's making money?
Who's playing shows across the globe?
Who's getting free shoes?
Me."
Even though Eilish is just getting started, it's clear that the singer is poised for a
career to rival, or even outshine, many of her predecessors.
With her 2019 Coachella debut behind her and millions of streams to her name, the world
is truly her oyster.
"A lot of it doesn't feel worth it.
But then you get to the points that do make it worth it, and it's like, then it all sort
of makes sense, and it kinda clicks in your head."
Perhaps what's so refreshing about Eilish is that, despite her many accomplishments
and accolades, everything about her reads as 100 percent authentic.
Zane Lowe of Apple Music said of the artist,
"Billie is fully [involved] across all of her creative, down to the smallest details.
She is riding a wave of her own making."
And by the looks of it, we're all here for Eilish, wherever she wants to take us.
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