How Billie Eilish went from unknown teen to megastar in two years

Photographed by Jesse Lizotte, styled by Jillian Davison, Vogue Australia, July 2019.

Like many teenage girls, Billie Eilish considers her bedroom her sanctuary. It’s where she writes, thinks and hides from the world, and its constantly changing decor is a manifestation of all that’s going on in her extraordinary mind. “My room is like my little palace,” she says. “But my room is the thing in my life that’s changed the most over time. I change my mind a lot … my room has been 20 different rooms over the years.”

Yet few teenage girls can claim to speak to millions of people from their bedroom. Eilish can. That hit home at a recent concert in New Zealand, when she looked at the sea of faces in front of her, and “saw girls in my merchandise that I designed in my room”, she says. “I saw them crying and singing my lyrics at the top of their lungs and jumping and screaming and having the time of their lives. It made me think about the way I used to watch documentaries of my favourite artists and I used to cry because it was so beautiful. And there I was, on that stage … I stood there and just cried. It hurt in an amazing, beautiful, horrible, amazing way.”

Eilish is just 17 years old, and one of the most popular musicians in the world. She is the first artist born after the turn of the millennium to have a number one album, and she has reached one billion streams on Spotify. Her appeal lies in her unique mix of talent, wisdom beyond her years, and a strong self-belief – a result, perhaps, of an unorthodox childhood that trained her in how to walk her own path.

She’ll need all three of these strengths to help her navigate a meteoric rise; in the space of just two years, Eilish has gone from unknown teen to megastar. “It’s been a lot,” she concedes. “But right now it’s pretty perfect. I don’t have anything to complain about. I’m pretty happy.”

Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell was born to actors Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Connell in Los Angeles in 2001. Her brother, Finneas O’Connell, who is four years older, is her songwriting partner, and they write and produce her music in the bedrooms of their childhood home. He takes to the stage every night with her on tour and has also just started releasing his own solo work.

The siblings were home-schooled, a point of difference that their mother, Maggie Baird, believes was instrumental in shaping their characters. “We home-schooled in a way that was interest-led and experiential. Nothing had a higher value than the other, so going to a symphony and learning about maths through cooking or having a science birthday party all had the same weight. They were nurtured in what they wanted to do and had the time to do it.” The family is steeped in music. “We have a tiny house with three pianos in it … three pianos in a 1,200-foot house!”

At age 13 Eilish’s debut Ocean Eyes exploded on Soundcloud. It was a dreamy, feel-it-in-your-soul ballad written by O’Connell and sung by Eilish. At 15, Eilish was signed by a record label, graduated from her home school, and began touring with her family around the world. Eilish and her brother first performed in Sydney at the Lansdowne Hotel in September 2017 to a crowd of 250 people. The audience was spellbound by her beautiful, delicately raw vocals, and her unpolished charisma (combined with O’Connell’s hypnotic beats).

When the pair returned for a follow-up show at Sydney’s Oxford Art Factory soon after, they had amassed a cult following. The audience sang along fiercely to every lyric as Eilish let go and skyrocketed around the stage. This year’s Coachella performance, her first at the festival, was equally electrifying – an adrenalin rush of pure fun that offered the 100,000-strong crowd an escape. Eilish’s trademark whispering hypnotic staccato had impassioned fans screaming, even when she forgot lyrics at one point.

A recent return to Australia off the back of her record-breaking debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, has seen Eilish come full circle. This time round she’s played to 33,000 fans at her headline shows in much bigger venues. In Melbourne, her concert sold out in a day, and some who missed out were offering up to $1,000 for a ticket.

Over the intervening years, Eilish has matured. She is more confident on stage – bolder – and knows her power. “There are so many things I used to have deal with that I don’t at all anymore and there are so many things I never used to have to deal with that I do now. It’s a weird balance between the two. I’m a lot more protective of everything.”

Commentators struggle to find categories for Eilish. She is as big as a young Madonna, but not nearly as brash. She joins a proud tradition of teenage renegades, among them, Kate Bush, Avril Lavigne (the equivalent of Eilish 17 years ago) and, more recently, Lorde. But perhaps there is no box for this teenager who wears baggy clothes, writes songs about mental health, night terrors and break-ups, doesn’t take drugs – due to apathy, she says – and recently revealed that she has Tourette syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes movements known as tics.

Former Nirvana drummer, Dave Grohl, believes she has a rare, once-in-a-generation authenticity. His daughters are fans, and so is he, after attending one of Eilish’s concerts. “What I’m seeing happening with my daughters is the same revolution that happened to me at their age,” he said in a social media post. “They’re becoming themselves through her music. She totally connects with them … [it] is the same thing that was happening with Nirvana in 1991.”

Whatever magic Eilish creates in her songs, it’s precious. And, with unusual wisdom for a 17-year-old, she knows how easily it can be destroyed. There are parasites in the music industry, and Eilish likens them to swarming ants kept away from food by a fence. “It’s up to you to keep the fence there,” she says. “If you just lifted it up, all the ants are going to go eat the food. That’s what the industry is like. Everyone is ready to tell you what to do. Everyone is ready to be, like: ‘You’re my creation.’ It’s weird that the hard thing to do is do what you want to, because everyone wants to make a product.”

She is convincing the industry that she knows what she’s doing. “It took a lot of time to gain people’s trust in the fact I know what I’m going to do, what I’m good at and what I want.”

Baird is in awe of her daughter’s strength. “Honestly, I’ve never seen anyone quite like Billie who really knows what she likes and doesn’t like and immediately says it. I tend to be a person who needs to please and Billie is not that way. She is very loving and wonderful and generous, but she doesn’t hold back on her opinions. She wants the creative to be what she wants it to be, and she has a vision and says what that is. She never goes along with something just to make it easier.”

That self-assuredness is also evident in the fact Eilish doesn’t appear to feel it’s mandatory to flash her flesh in order to get attention. Quite the opposite. She prefers baggy clothes and sneakers, a quasi uniform intended to stop people judging her body. On set with Vogue Australia in Brisbane during her recent tour, she wore a Moncler puffer jacket and Louis Vuitton tie-dye top. Off set she is usually dressed in luxury logos, larger-than-life hoodies in shades of neon, knee-length free-flowing shorts, glistening chains wrapped around her neck and shining silver rings on every finger – her self-styled armour. And, of course, she always wears great sneakers.

Clothes are important to her. “Oh my god, dude. That’s the first thing that matters in every day of my life,” she says. “Everywhere I go, everything I do. Everything. It’s the first thing that I think about that I barely even think about it. It’s my whole identity. My whole personality is based off my clothes and what I’m wearing that day. I’ll have a different personality for a different outfit sometimes. If I’m wearing something I don’t feel comfortable in I will turn into a totally different persona that I hate,” she says, laughing.

Eilish is at the forefront of a generation fighting for its own voice. In late 2018 she teamed up with the LA mayor to encourage people to vote. As her star keeps rising she wants to keep pushing for change.

“I really don’t want to waste my platform. I’m trying not to but I think all of us in the spotlight – or whatever you want to call it – can be more vocal about climate change and things that need to be talked about. I still think I can do more. There are so many things being determined by people who are going to die soon anyway because they’re old as fuck. It makes me so angry,” she continues. “There are so many things I wish I could snap my fingers and make better. There is so much that needs help and [there are] people who pretend they care and don’t and [then] people who could do something, but don’t. I’m here and I can actually try. I suddenly have a platform and a spotlight that I can maybe, maybe, maybe make a difference to something.”

Her mum echoes her thoughts: “I hope that she uses that power and control and creative energy to better things beyond art.”

Of the future and what’s next, she’s keeping things firmly in the short term: “I just want to see what happens. I hope I make an impact. I don’t like to think about the future, because it kind of freaks me out. I just want to live in the space I’m in right now. I’m cool with that.”

Eilish is passionate, inspiring and liberating. The debut album is a wonderland of theme songs to moments in life, her style is defiantly hers and her perspective on the world is wise beyond her years. “I just want to do what I do.”

This article will appear in Vogue Australia’s July 2019 issue, on sale Monday, June 24.