Billie Eilish, the Unofficial Biography

by Adrian Besley

  For all the liberal parenting, homeschooling, and precocious performances, Billie had a recognizably normal childhood. She rode her Razor scooter up and down the block, played with other children, and watched TV and movies. As she got older, she plastered her bedroom walls with pictures of Justin Bieber, worried about her appearance, obsessed over boys, and hung out with her friends in Starbucks. One of them, Zoe Donahoe, who was pictured with Billie back when they were five, can still be seen accompanying her “lil sister” on tours over ten years later. The other constant was Finneas. While he was now in his late teens and had his own pursuits, he continued to enjoy making music with his sibling. As his room increasingly came to resemble a recording studio, she could often be found watching him work and trying out her own songs.

  For all the liberal parenting, homeschooling, and precocious performances, Billie had a recognizably normal childhood.

  Her life in Highland Park contributed to Billie developing the talent and personality to be a star at such a young age. Being exposed to a wide range of music, encouraged to play and sing her own songs, and given opportunities to perform clearly prepared her for a life as a musician. While homeschooling might not be for everyone, Billie seems to have thrived on the lack of control, routine, and peer pressure. She pins the fact that she puts such little stock in what others think of her down to not having to worry about her popularity among her classmates.

  However, from the age of thirteen, Billie’s childhood started to change. It was invaded by external forces: music industry executives, promoters, managers, musicians, and fans. Many young people would have found it overwhelming. Billie was more prepared than most. Her upbringing had given her a rare confidence, a maturity beyond her years, a family that provided comfort and security, and, as the world would soon discover, considerable talent.

  Chapter Two

  Overnight Sensation

  The story is now part of pop history, set to be retold a million times.

  It’s a fairy tale about a thirteen-year-old girl who went to bed a nobody and woke up a star. And while that sounds like a Disney movie plot, it really isn’t too far from the truth. Billie Eilish was just a normal teenager who happened to post a song online, and Billie herself admits that when the song went viral, everything changed so suddenly it was difficult to take in. She just went along with it, loving every moment.

  Back in the autumn of 2015, if any member of the O’Connell family seemed destined to be a star it was Billie’s eighteen-year-old brother, Finneas, whose acting career was taking off. He had followed appearances in the movie Bad Teacher with TV roles, including a major part in the final season of Glee, which had been broadcast early in 2015. At the same time his band, the Slightlys, were winning friends and acclaim in Los Angeles. They had played in front of ten thousand people in the Santa Monica Pier Twilight Concert Series and an LA Weekly article in October 2014 had hinted that they might be “the next big thing.”

  Thirteen-year-old Billie was content to bask in her brother’s success. After becoming disheartened by a disastrous audition, she had rejected the idea of following her parents and brother into the acting game, and by this time, much of her creative energy was directed toward dance. Billie’s early enthusiasm for tap had grown into a love of all kinds of dance—and even now when she talks about dancing, it’s clear she adores the freedom it gives her to express herself. At thirteen she was attending the Revolution Dance Center (RDC) in LA, where she spent up to eleven hours a week in the dance studio, concentrating on learning contemporary, lyrical, and hip-hop styles, and performing in regular competitions. Billie seemed set to become a dancer.

  She still loved to sing, though. In fact, it was impossible not to sing in such a musical household. She would sing the songs her parents played, songs she loved herself, and songs she or Finneas had written. Through the bedroom wall, she could hear Finneas writing and recording music on Logic Pro at his workstation, and she knew his songs almost as well as he did. Billie would join him too, adding her soft, melodic voice to his compositions, harmonizing, and even trying out her own songs.

  She still loved to sing, though. In fact, it was impossible not to sing in such a musical household.

  On August 1, 2015 (the day after Finneas’s eighteenth birthday), they uploaded one of their collaborations to SoundCloud, the online platform for sharing and discovering original music. The song was titled “sHE’s brOKen,” with “HE’s OK” standing out in capital letters and contrasting with the sentiment of the title. Billie must have been aware of the “sHE beLIEveD” meme (with “HE LIED” picked out in the same way) that had been popular across the web since 2012, but nevertheless, it was a smart variation on the theme. The lyrics painted a straightforward “end of relationship” picture to a simple backing track (enhanced by a few production gimmicks courtesy of Finneas), with Billie providing a sweet and tuneful vocal. You can certainly tell it is Billie, but there is none of the ethereal quality or even the candy-coated whispers of her later hits.

  On September 14, another track appeared on SoundCloud. Billie says that “Fingers Crossed” was the first song she wrote and that she didn’t like it at the time but just felt like uploading it. In a songwriting class, her mother had asked her to watch a TV movie or show and note down any titles, names, or dialogue that would sit well in a song. Billie turned to her favorite show, The Walking Dead, and the zombie drama series provided lyrics such as “Everybody makes it ’til they don’t” and “Too far gone,” the title of one episode. Billie has since said she intended to write about the zombie apocalypse, but somehow it came out as an anguish-filled love song.

  Billie has said she intended to write about the zombie apocalypse, but somehow it came out as an anguish-filled love song.

  “Fingers Crossed” was different from the first song she had posted. Billie sings of longing and despair over a portentous track that’s punctuated by a slow beat, sparse instrumentation, and drawn-out chords. Now there is an intimacy and poignancy to the vocals, with that feeling of Billie being incredibly close and yet so distant at the same time. It’s a vocal style that would become familiar in the next couple of years, and many fans still rate the track highly.

  Billie and hip-hop

  Billie was eleven years old and sitting on her bed listening to music. She shared her music library with Finneas and didn’t know half the tracks on it. With her player on shuffle, “Heartbeat” by Childish Gambino, a song she had never heard before, came on, and she was awestruck. Here was a world she’d been missing. This is what she liked. Billie had met hip-hop.

  At the time that “ocean eyes” hit SoundCloud in 2015, that same streaming platform had become a gold mine for those looking for innovative hip-hop acts. There was an exciting proliferation of punk rap, mumble rap, emo rap, and trap-influenced SoundCloud artists. Billie dived headfirst into this scene and came up loving Tyler, the Creator; XXXTentacion; Ski Mask the Slump God; Lil Pump; and others who were making DIY lo-fi tracks (often, like her and Finneas, in their own bedrooms).

  Billie continued to have a voracious appetite for hip-hop. Like many teenagers, she loves Travis Scott, J. Cole, A$AP Rocky, and Drake (at one time she said “The Motto” was her favorite song) but also rappers like Denzel Curry, Earl Sweatshirt (“I wana have his kids,” she tweeted in 2018), and Tierra Whack. She still takes great delight in discovering new talent and has promoted emerging artists such as Leikeli47, Smino, Moses, Dominic Fike, and British rapper Mehki Raine (formerly Crooks), who contributed vocals to “bury a friend.”

  Although she has never been a rap or hip-hop artist, so much about the Billie we see now is down to that genre. The clever wordplay in her lyrics, her F-you attitude, her outfits, her movements onstage, and the mosh-pit songs at her shows all have a connection to hip-hop. That said, she believes she’s not alone. “Everyone needs to give hip-hop credit—everyone in the world right now,” she told the New York Times. “Whatever you’re doing, you’ve been influenced by hip-hop.”


  As you would expect, these tracks made very little impact at the time, with only a small number of plays registering on SoundCloud. Like thousands of kids (and adults), Billie and Finneas uploaded them for fun and intended to share them just with friends. They never dreamed that they would be played millions of times. Besides, Billie was busy dancing, working on her homeschool projects, and having fun. She even attended her first major concert that autumn, when she and Finneas went to see the hip-hop-inspired US rock band the Neighbourhood at the Shrine, a cavernous auditorium in LA. In 2019 she would return to the venue to play two sold-out concerts of her own.

  What happened next would change Billie O’Connell’s life forever. One of her dance teachers at RDC was Fred Diaz, a dancer and choreographer who had worked with several top artists, including Rihanna, Mariah Carey, and Jennifer Lopez. He knew of Billie and Finneas’s songwriting efforts and had suggested he could choreograph a dance to one of their compositions. When she asked him what kind of song he had in mind, he mentioned “Station” by British singer Låpsley, a song they had recently danced to, and also alluded to a tune he had overheard her humming in class. She knew the song immediately. It was one of her brother’s, which she had heard through the bedroom wall and sung along to—and which had been going round and round in her head for the last couple of weeks. It was called “ocean eyes,” and Finneas had originally written it for the Slightlys.

  The band had already performed “ocean eyes,” but Finneas suspected it might be perfect for Billie. She had been having a hard time with a boy she was obsessed with, and he sensed she would identify with it. He was right. Billie felt he had looked into her heart when he wrote the words—as if he had written it for her. When Billie sang along, it fit perfectly. She gave it a depth of feeling that it had never had before.

  At the same time, Billie was thinking about the song as a dance track and how it could best suit a contemporary dance choreography. The siblings worked on the track together in Finneas’s tiny bedroom studio, Billie sitting cross-legged on the bed while her brother sat at the computer. They worked on the tempo and arrangement (Finneas recalls how they agreed on everything about the song—which would not always be the case) and, having finished the recording, listened back to it and realized they had created something they could be really proud of. They uploaded the track to SoundCloud with a free download button for Fred Diaz. It was November 18, 2015, and although she didn’t know it yet, Billie’s career as a pop star had begun.

  Although she didn’t know it yet, Billie’s career as a pop star had begun.

  The next day Billie was in Starbucks, sheltering from the cold between dance classes, when she received a call from Finneas (Billie admits it may have been a couple of days later, but the overnight story is so much more dramatic!). He told her that the song had received a thousand plays on SoundCloud. They were both astounded. Of course, their friends would have been supportive and spread the word, but there was no way they knew that many people! Billie recalls that their ridiculously excited call went on so long that she ended up having to run to get to her next class in time—with a huge grin on her face.

  Billie had taken her first two names as a stage name, so it may have been Billie O’Connell who uploaded the track, but as “ocean eyes” registered more and more plays, it was Billie Eilish who was rapidly gaining recognition. If you have ever uploaded a song, picture, or video online, you know how difficult it is to get likes or hits from outside your own circle, so you can probably imagine the disbelief and joy Billie and Finneas felt at the success of their song—and that was without any marketing or publicity. However, this was a well-crafted, excellently produced, and flawlessly sung track. It was going viral because it was a compelling and incredibly catchy song.

  The three-and-a-half-minute “ocean eyes” is a dreamy ballad built on a minimal backing of soft percussion and electronic beats. The lyrics tell of an intense love and use metaphors ranging from blindness to burning cities to convey emotions from deep calm to immense agitation. The key to its appeal really is in Billie’s singing. Her voice already sounds more mature than in her previous tracks and you can hear the influence of Lana Del Rey, Aurora, and Låpsley. Her vocals are strong and clear, but through her soprano voice and intense phrasing, they carry a fragility and sensitivity that conveys a powerful emotion. This is all emphasized by the layering of her voice, which gives the whole song a heartrending, sad, and haunting quality.

  For an unknown artist with no record-company backing it was an amazing release, but its chance of standing out among the millions of tracks on SoundCloud was miniscule. However, against all the odds, “ocean eyes” continued to get noticed. Within a week, the LA-based music blog Free Bike Valet, already friends of the Slightlys, had picked up on it, describing the track as “a hypnotic trip-pop smash built on delicate digi-beats, surreal synth effects and Eilish’s angelically soft vox,” while Californian music tastemakers Blah Blah Blah Science picked out Billie’s “very graceful high-angelic stunning-dreamy harmonic vocals.” It also began getting airplay on KCRW, a public radio station in nearby Santa Monica, where it had been discovered by their DJ, Jason Kramer.

  Against all the odds, “ocean eyes” continued to get noticed.

  The real game changer was a man named Chad Hillard, who claims to have spotted the track when it had just a hundred or so plays. Chad runs Hillydilly, a respected and influential website dedicated to unearthing new music, which “discovered” Lorde and Låpsley. With Hillydilly’s recommendation and an article praising both “ocean eyes” and “Fingers Crossed,” Billie was on her way. Six months later, she would acknowledge the importance of their backing when she wrote on Facebook: “Hillydilly.com started it all. Thank you for everything Michael Enwright [who wrote the article], Chad Hillard, I love you.”

  Within a couple of weeks, remixes of the track were appearing on SoundCloud too. Up-and-coming producer Cautious Clay and Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend” cowriter Blackbear both posted versions, but the standout and most popular was by an English songwriter and producer, Arron Davey, who works under the name Astronomyy. His remix emerged at the end of November 2015, and it surprised even Billie.

  He messaged her on Instagram asking for the lyrics. She gave them to him, and the next thing she knew the remix had appeared on the site. Astronomyy claims he heard the track one night and immediately spent the next six hours working on it. His version doubles up on the haunting percussion and piercing vocals, and adds a subaquatic feel that heightens the already chilling atmospheric qualities of the song. For many, it was the best production of the song yet and, created by an artist whose own tracks had gathered millions of plays, it introduced “ocean eyes” to thousands more listeners.

  Billie was naturally astounded and unprepared for the response to the track. Fortunately, through the Slightlys, Finneas had become friends with Danny Rukasin, a manager involved in the LA band scene. Rukasin immediately understood what was happening with “ocean eyes” and knew that a young girl like Billie—in fact, anyone—would be struggling to deal with the success. The day after it went viral, he offered to help and went to their home to meet with not only Billie but with Finneas and their parents too. He was eager to find out whether Billie was set on being a musician or if she was just happy with the attention the song was getting. It didn’t take him long to realize she had already thought this through and had a clear idea of how she wanted to present herself to the world.

  Billie was naturally astounded and unprepared for the response to the track.

  Dance was an important part of Billie’s vision. She considered herself a dancer as much as, or even more than, a singer. As promised, Fred had choreographed a dance to “ocean eyes,” but Billie got to work on it for just two days. She was in a hip-hop class with an older group when she ruptured the growth plate in her hip. Her dancing days weren’t finished, but they were on ice for the time being. Fortunately, she had another passion to fall back on and it was gathering steam.

&n
bsp; As Billie celebrated her fourteenth birthday on December 18, 2015, it must have been difficult to take it all in. “Ocean eyes” had now garnered over 150,000 plays, she was featured regularly in new music articles online, and she was receiving all kinds of offers. The input of entertainment-industry-savvy parents, a brother who was himself only just dipping his toes in the LA music scene, and a friendly local manager were all incredibly welcome, but if Billie was going to build on this success—and do it her own way—she was going to need more help, quickly.

  Chapter Three

  The Real Deal

  For some, finding the truly authentic pop star is the holy grail of modern music.

  They immediately discount anyone who emerges from talent shows such as X-Factor or America’s Got Talent, or anyone who is styled and prepped for stardom from an early age, like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, or the Jonas Brothers. Others are dismissed as “industry plants”—Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber are often cited as examples—a term that implies a person is pretending to have made it through sheer talent when really they had a record company or industry figures behind them. If you can fake authenticity, cynics say, you’re the real deal!

  The truth is, in a world of global charts, streaming sites, and mega promotions, it is impossible to break through to the general public without some serious backing. Some people are molded by producers, publicists, and stylists from a young age, while others are discovered and identified as potential stars. By January 2016, “ocean eyes” had put Billie Eilish, now fourteen, in both categories: young enough to be turned into a star and talented enough to be taken under a company’s wing.