Billie Eilish is a riddle. Unraveling her successful musical enigma is a fascinating challenge. Her music is a generational bridge and a meeting point between the new and the past. Millennial power already seduces beyond a generation. Billie is the first artist born in the 2000s to have the number 1 hit in the US. Why?
The pop princess shines in the darkness of her music and in the gothic aesthetics of her videos. A whole response to purplish times on Instagram. Her personality keeps clues that explain this global phenomenon. What clues have we found to unravel the enigma Billie Eilish?
Clue 1: Homeschooling
The irruption of Billie Eilish would not be possible without this controversial clue: Homeschooling. We arrive in Los Angeles at the beginning of the 2000s. Billie is born in a family of artists that live in a good neighborhood of the city in 2001.
Her brother waits for her at home. He’s only 3 years old. Both inherited the passion for the art from their parents, Maggie Baird, actress, and Finneas O’Connell, composer and supporting actor.
The recession of 2008 takes the money of the family and their stability. They move to a house with three pianos and two rooms. There, begins the true story of a girl who still has hobbies as the equestrian, but must make sacrifices such as cleaning horses to enjoy them.
This paradigm shift transforms the way of seeing the life of little Billie. Her parents immerse her in a creative universe generated by themselves. They decide to educate their children on their own and focus on music as a roadmap for their future.
Classes of singing, piano, ukulele and dance substitute the tedious hours of school. Without schoolwork and a lot of time to create, music flows from the siblings.
Her brother Finneas sees homeschooling as the quintessence of boredom and that, according to him, has been the trigger for his creativity. What else can two children do without schooling? Soon they begin to give strange fruits that vital destiny marked by their parents.
Clue 2: Technology
A dance teacher asks Billie for a choreographed song. She borrows from her brother a rhythm that turns into Ocean Eyes. After breaking into SoundCloud in a brilliant way and appear as a rebellion on YouTube the song opens the path of musical Olympus with only being 12 years old.
Another key point that explains her success is technology. In her brother’s room they’ve played with software that is equivalent to a recording studio of yesteryear. The democratization of music has turned them into producers and children capable of playing music making rhythms that govern the mainstream.
Clue 3: DIY
That clue leads us to another that explains her connection to her generation: the feeling of being able to do what you want in your own way. The creative facilities that are currently found by the adolescents lead them to explore their own style.
Locked in their room, both create an alternative world. A different way of socializing due to their curious homeschooling leads them to capture realities lived by them, part fiction, part real. Her brother recognizes that Billie does not pretend to rebel against her education but against the concept of fame that now surrounds her.
She usually mixes a kind of darkness with kawaii philosophy and a naive reality that hooks for its dark tenderness. Billie recognized: What I want is to be an adult. Growing up is cool. Go to the store and buy what you want.
A light form of youthful liberation that fuses with stranger thoughts: Do you remember being younger and wanting to be one of those who dies in the game? I’m not a bad boy in real life so I put on a mask. When you are small, composing is the same as playing.
Billie has different obsessions that uses in her social media or her songs. One is her Invisalign. I took it off and that’s the album, she recognized in a recent interview. Another is the The Office TV Show.
Clue 4: Aesthetic Maturity
If something catches the attention of her lyrics and videos is that darkness so characteristic where you find references from homosexuality and Carpe Diem to a creepy concept of friendship or self-destruction.
This flogging is part of a universe that hooks the pessimism of generation X and the existential boredom of generation Z with the depressive rebellion without cause of the millennials.
In videos like When the Party’s Over or Bury a Friend, she reflects that delicious tendency to the dark. Reflections abound on loneliness and allude to the evil found in others. A review of Sartre that appears in times of poses and absurd luxuries portrayed on Instagram. Her proposal is a necessary counterpoint. She makes it stand out above a pop with too much glitter.
Undoubtedly, the most obvious clue to understanding their generational bridge is an aesthetic maturity that attracts any viewer.
Clue 5: Naturalness
She considers herself a fan of many artists. Some have influenced her music such as Lorde, Avril Lavigne or Lana del Rey. Icons of previous generations that have accused premature wear. Will the same happen to Billie when she loses her freshness and the surprise factor?
Its intergenerational connection ensures it sits on the market but runs the risk that the industry transforms its style in pursuit of a commerciality that would end with the product. We will discover it over the years.
For the moment, her naturalness manifested in interviews and in her funny stories on Instagram have turned her into a generational icon. She usually rails against the social media and the moral judgments that they subject to their users, although she knows how to use them very well, creating a fresh and close product.
She has 10 million subscribers on YouTube, 6 million followers on Instagram, her favorite social media, 2 million on her commercial Facebook profile and 1.4 on Twitter.
It is not difficult to imagine her followers empathizing with her. Her youthful philosophy points to the same common points. Freedom, fight for personal identity in a standardized world and extreme tolerance that matches a generation open to everyone.
She usually has contact by Instagram with her anonymous and also famous followers, like Shawn Mendes who was jilted through DM. Although, she recognizes that touring is shit, but she does it to be in touch with her growing legion of fans.
Clue 6: Style
The success of her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? it was something expected after two golden discs for her apocalyptic single Ocean Eyes and for her collaboration with Khalid, Lovely.
Interscope Records signed fast the hidden gem on the Soundcloud, a silent revolution that barely made the Internet roar when she was only 15 years old.
Bellyache appeared in February of 2017 and just in a matter of days she blew up YouTube. A month later her song Bored appeared in the decade’s teen hit: 13 Reason Why. A diffusion that placed her in the shuttle of stardom. A year later she would repeat in the second season of the series with Lovely.
Since then, she hasn’t stopped climbing. Golden record for the EP Do Not Smile at Me and double toured with Florence and the Machine, another of her great musical obsessions. How can we musically explain the resounding success of a teenager?
Her brother has managed to stamp his own music on his sister’s music. A beautiful production filled with powerful beats, flashing keyboards and a goth futuristic vibe that sometimes sounds like House, almost always like Synthpop, Folk, R & B and Trap. A cocktail difficult to serve but very simple to consume.
The tandem works. She composes, he produces. This has always been from their childhood with Irish and Scottish roots. They define their music in an eclectic way: We make shit to cry but also music to enjoy life.
Her new definition of pop is also based on aesthetics. Her outfits are pure millennial. The Wonky Fashion invades the streets of the 21st century.
Informal, shrill, sporty, scruffy but cool and with that attitude of what the fuck, Billie is the perfect incarnation of the Wonky, although she says not to resemble anyone and is preparing a clothing line. Her style is another key to her success.
Clue 7: One of Ours
Another of the topics that any pop icon must fulfill to stand out among the masses is to have some characteristic that differentiates themselves. A kind of symptom of the supernatural.
In the case of Billie, it’s about Tourette Syndrome. This nervous system disorder causes endless physical tics that can become verbal. You’ve seen it in countless movies, although in Billie’s case it’s not that extreme. In the social media proliferate compilations of her tics, extracted from her interviews or her life on Instagram.
Billie assures to take it with naturalness although like everything in its life it contains a contradiction. She has recently recognized her illness and hiding her tics in her appearances in the media through pre-recorded interviews on Ellen DeGeneres’ show.
The visibility that she makes of her ailment generates empathy in an audience that can be classified or marginalized by any type of discrimination. Another key to understanding her rise to the generational throne.
Billie Eilish Deciphered
Billie recognized recently: I do not know what my life is. A sip of tormented youth, what more attractive can you add to the Billie Eilish phenomenon?
She has followed a strategy used by almost every icon in the history of music. Billie offers something different that is in the environment and that fills an existential vacuum: An underground and alternative response to the mainstream. That’s what the Eilish siblings have done from their bedroom, full of dreams and nightmares.
And they have done it with a voice that makes an analysis of the mind and the paths of life. Hers fill existential vacuums that become flesh and bones in recurring nightmares suffered in times of appearances. A whole claim of the rarities of the soul.
Another interesting point is a fake or not material detachment. Something that differences her with the rest of her generation and a small step forward although maybe it responds to her naive and carefree vibes.
What will Billie be like in a few years? Will the industry sweep her depth? That is why we are fascinated by this effervescent moment of her career. Still halfway between the underground and the mainstream, in total freedom. We will remain attentive to decipher the new keys that Billie Eilish leaves behind.
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