"I’m the bad guy, duh!"
There’s never been a pop star quite like Billie Eilish.
Who in the world is this hoe? I don’t know!
The teenager with the heavy-lidded eyes
and baggy clothes doesn’t conform
to our usual expectations for female singers.
“Can I just say I think Ariana deserves this?”
Yet her songs have been streamed
more than 15 billion times worldwide,
and in the few short years since her 2017 debut,
she’s become one of those rare, once-in-a-generation icons.
“Billie billie billie billie”
Even more remarkably, her success can be attributed
to the fact that it negates so many of these things
we associate with pop stardom.
“There was no intention whatsoever,
none of that like “I’m gonna be a star”.
“She is a star.” “Shut up!”
But negation, by nature, is also a definition.
And the phenomenon of Billie Eilish also defines her era
and, as The New Yorker wrote about her,
the “changing face of pop” within it.
“I just want to create stuff that people can feel.”
“Fame is irrelevant.”
Eilish’s meteoric rise reflects how technology
has made music easier than ever to create and distribute.
Her casual style and offbeat persona
speak to a craving for authenticity
in an age when so much feels manufactured,
as well as a rejection of the sexist standards of celebrity.
Or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?
And the dark themes of her songs—
which touch on topics like climate change, depression,
and suicide— tap into not only the emotions of her young fans,
but also the universal angst of living in the 21st century.
“Why so sad?” “ I don’t know…
Uh, the world sucks and fame is trash, so….”
Here’s our take on how Billie Eilish
became the unlikely voice of our moment,
and created a new kind of pop star.
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“ Ha! My name is Billie and I’m going to play a song
that I made up with this guitar.”
The phenomenon of Billie Eilish, like most things nowadays,
would not be possible without the internet.
Her first brush with fame began with an accidental viral hit
at the age of 14, when Eilish recorded the vocals for “Ocean Eyes,”
a song written by her older brother Finneas.
“Those ocean eyes…”
When they first uploaded “Ocean Eyes” to SoundCloud,
they had no intentions beyond sharing the track
with Eilish’s dance teacher, and maybe a few friends.
But “Ocean Eyes” became a runaway success,
championed by music critics and radio stations alike.
“That was like the most beautiful moment.
And Finneas called me and he was like
“dude Ocean Eyes got a thousand plays”
Can you believe it?”
Most of the songs on Billie’s 2017 debut EP,
Don’t Smile At Me, as well as her 2019 album,
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?,
were still recorded and produced right there
inside Finneas’ tiny bedroom within their family home.
Their music still bears the inherent playfulness
of a couple of kids just messing around.
“So many people just think that you need to rent a studio
and you need to have all these producers and co writers
if you wanna make art like fucking make art.”
Although critics have often tried to characterize
Eilish’s music as “electro pop,” she’s equally as influenced
by SoundCloud rappers, EDM, trap and even jazz.
I was always listening to 8000 things at once.
And the duo found other musical inspiration
in the unlikeliest of sounds.
“I have taken out my invisalign.”
The chorus of her hit single “Bad Guy”
includes a sample of the ticking sound
made by pedestrian crossings in Australia.
“Bury a Friend” features a recording of a staple gun,
as well as the sound of Eilish’s actual dentist.
“You hear a drill shaving off my teeth
and it was not a good feeling
and it doesn’t sound like a good feeling.”
This kind of uninhibited free association is also
found in her music’s many references to pop culture
“There’s a whole crowd of people out there
who need to learn how to do the Scarn.”
While these juxtapositions may seem completely disconnected,
they echo a type of “hyperlink thinking”
that is the natural vernacular for a generation
raised on memes and Wikipedia rabbit-holes.
“You know what it literally is?
It’s literally plants versus zombies
and wizards of waverly place.”
And her relationship to her audience
is intimate in a way that could only be fostered
by the accessibility of the internet.
“I wanna be reachable to everyone
I never went to a Bieber concert
I couldn’t even try to afford to go.
If there are people waiting outside for me
I go up to them and I hug them all” ”
and that’s also inspired by growing up as a Belieber herself.
“I only wanted to be famous
to get closer to Justin Bieber.”
Eilish reflects today’s online/ DIY era, too,
by overseeing every detail of her creative output.
On top of writing, producing, and performing her own music,
Eilish also designs her own merch,
creates treatments for her videos,
and handles her own social media.
“I’m thinking about the video, I’m thinking about the artwork
and about the colors and the way it’s going to feel
and how it’s going to look.”
“Is my value based only on your perception?”
With her idiosyncratic vision and organic rise,
Eilish is not a product of the fine-tuned, slick,
militaristic machine of celebrity culture.
Billie ultimately signed with a label
that would give her creative control of her career
and was excited about the vision
and wasn’t trying to turn Billie
into something that she wasn’t.
She’s the polar opposite of say, K-pop stars performers,
who, famously, go through rigorous training
in special bootcamps before they are selected
and sorted into bands. Pop music, in general,
has a long history of manufacturing stardom.
It’s no secret that chart-topping songs
are typically the result of collaborations
between assorted producers, vocalists and songwriters,
hired to create the beats, find the hooks and write the lyrics.
From the Jackson 5 in the 70’s, to N’Sync in the 90’s,
to One Direction in the 2010’s, pop’s biggest acts typically launch
backed by external capital, and controlled by ironclad contracts.
This is especially true when it comes to female pop stars,
who have long been forced to cultivate
some degree of sex appeal simply to exist.
“Like, I cut out half the video because I am a mother
“Are they pushing you further than you wanna go?
“Yes.”
And even though this sexed-up persona
has come to be expected of female performers,
they’re often also critiqued for being too sexy.
“Beyonce walks to the grocery like this
Like Oh Oh Milk and bread motherf*cker.”
Eilish’s resistance to being marketed
or perceived as a sex object has led her to adopt
a signature style of dressing that’s built largely around
oversized tees and baggy shorts paired with high-top sneakers.
“This shirt is like the only size shirt i ever wanna wear.”
The resulting get-ups make her look,
as Tyler the Creator succinctly put it,
“like a quarterback.”
Eilish’s insistence on wearing baggy clothing
Is partly a defense mechanism,
but it’s also a form of empowerment.
“Nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen
what’s underneath. Nobody can be like
oh she’s slim thic, she’s not slim thic,
she’s got a flat ass, she’s got a fat ass.”
While her clothes hide her body,
they allow her to be seen on her own terms.
“Young people and young women in general
That you’re going to inspire
just by being able to say ‘fuck it don’t style me
I don’t wanna be who you want me to be.’
This is who I am and you’re gonna love it”
As issues like body-shaming, slut-shaming,
and the over-sexualization of young women
continue to plague the music industry,
Eilish has become one of their most prominent critics,
using her appearance as a way of confronting them directly.
“Some people hate what I wear, some people praise it,
some people use it to shame others.”
This refusal to play to sexist expectations
has made Eilish a role model to her young female fans,
who recognize in her their own struggles with body image
and the pressures of conformity.
“If I wear what is comfortable, I am not a woman.
If I shed the layers, I’m a slut.”
But young girls alone don’t account for her billions of streams,
or Eilish being recruited to sing the theme song
for the new James Bond movie.
So what is it about her music
that speaks to so many, right now?
“What are you wondering? What do you know?”
“We wrote an album about depression
and suicidal thoughts and climate change
and being the bad guy whatever that means,
and we stand up here, confused and grateful.”
For a teenager, Eilish has a perspective
that feels remarkably world-weary.
“My soul? So cynical.”
“Your style doesn’t feel like the average 16-year-old.
My mother would always say oh this person’s been here before.
Like you’ve lived another life.” “That’s crazy!”
This depth can be partly explained by the way Eilish writes lyrics
from different points of view— and not always her own.
“You don’t have to be in love to write a song about being in love,
and you don’t have to hate someone to write about that.”
In Bury a Friend, she sings from the point of view
of a monster under the bed
“Why aren’t you scared of me?”
And she demonstrates how -- just like a playwright--
a musician can reflect more varied, universal experiences
by inhabiting multiple voices and characters.
“I wanna end me.”
Born just three months after the attacks of September 11,
Eilish is part of a generation that grew up amid
a pervasive sense of dread, with up-to-date information
about all of the world’s catastrophes at their fingertips.
“The world's a little blurry Or maybe it's my eyes.”
The anxiety, fear, and surreality of modern existence
permeate Eilish’s art, whose defining characteristic
is its haunted, ethereal quality— inspired, Eilish has said,
by lucid dreaming and night terrors.
“I tried to scream. But my head was underwater.”
Eilish has furthered this nightmarish feel in her visuals,
from the creepy cover of When We All Fall Asleep
to videos featuring imagery of syringes piercing her back
and spiders crawling out of her mouth.
Many of her songs are deliberately intended to be distressing.
“You feel uncomfortable. It feels uncomfortable.
It sounds like a headache”
Some of the anxiety Billie Eilish evokes
could be characterized as classic teen angst
“I really really really hate myself.”
But her broad popularity suggests that the angst
she captures isn’t limited to the young.
“There’s so many emotions that everyone feels
no matter how old or young you are.”
There is a widespread sense in today’s culture
that we are living in dark times, plagued by cataclysmic problems.
“Our earth is warming up and our oceans are rising.
Extreme weather is wrecking millions of lives.”
And Eilish is able to capture this in music that pairs
the horrors of 21st-century life with the timeless agonies of being young,
singing about climate change and ghosting in the same verse:
“Hills burn in California, my turn to ignore ya.”
Eilish’s voice is its own eloquent statement.
“What was it about Billie’s voice?” “Her emotionality.
Every time she sang a lyric I believed it.”
Unlike the typical sing-along pop anthems, many of her songs
Her work has even been criticized for being death-obsessed
But to Eilish, the themes of suicide
and depression in her work are really about expressing
the overwhelming nature of being alive.
“There were all these radio people
who wouldn’t play me because I was too sad
and no one was going to relate to it.
That was just funny to me because I was like
everybody has felt sad”
In stark contrast to so much pop music,
with its emphasis on escapism and easily conveyed emotions,
Eilish’s songs embrace many of the things
that are the most difficult to talk about. “
So actually the darkness of
your music is kind o f like catharsis?
“Totally. That's why I dont understand people
who say you shouldn’t listen to depressing music
if you’re depressed. I think its your comfort
that's your way of saying those things
without actually having to say them yourself.”
In this, Eilish embodies a generation
that has become increasingly restless
about the threats facing the planet.
“People are suffering, people are dying,
entire ecosystems are collapsing and all you can talk about
is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.”
and tired of the complacency of those in power .
“Out of date? A lot of stuff.
Politics, baby. These old motherfuckers trying
to make decisions for us? I don’t understand it.
Today it is primarily young people who have been leading the charge
on issues like climate change,
universal healthcare, and gun control.
“6 minutes and 20 seconds. In a little over 6 minutes 17
of our friends were taken from us,
15 were injured and everyone,
absolutely everyone in the Douglas community was forever altered.”
It’s a moment that demands a different kind of pop star—
one who doesn’t seem like an artificial distraction
from all of these problems, but offers an authentic reflection of them.
Someone real, whose art revels in the weird,
the uncomfortable, and the messily human.
People are like you’re a role model.
How could you say that? Like do you know why
they’re looking up to me? Because I say shit like that.”
In her music and in herself,
Billie Eilish has captured this latent, fervent desire
to challenge the status quo, and to give voice to all the tension
and the darkness that so many are feeling inside.
She is a star made by and for the 21st century.
And she promises to cast a long shadow over pop music’s future.
“It’s crazy to be heard. It’s really crazy to be heard.
I think so much of our tortures
as human beings is not being heard.”
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