Billie has broken records as a female artist, including being the first female artist to win all the “big four” GRAMMYs.
The unreleased “limbo” was replaced in the set list for the tour by another as-yet-unrecorded song called “listen before i go,” which had been played for the first time at the Melbourne concert. There is a beauty in its simplicity as its straight verse-and-chorus structure is softly played out to a piano accompaniment, but this is a suicide note in song: poignant and desolate, full of despair and self-recrimination, and tainted with bitterness. It is difficult to listen to with the knowledge that Billie was experiencing real depression around this time. In a year or so, at a concert in Toronto, when it was still to be recorded, she would explain that she didn’t want the song to bring fans down but to act as a “mental hug,” sharing emotions to make them bearable.
One more new song was debuted on October 21 in Philadelphia for the encore of the penultimate show of the tour. It was one that dedicated fans would have heard on a livestream just a few days before the tour had begun, when Billie had sung a particularly downbeat (as her mood dictated) version of “wish you were gay,” accompanying herself on the guitar. Even at that point she was aware of the way the song might be read, saying, “That’s so not meant to be offensive in any way. It literally means I wish he was gay so that he didn’t like me for an actual reason.”
Women’s rights
Billie has never proclaimed herself a feminist, but everything she has said and done would suggest that women’s rights are at the very core of her beliefs. Though her upbringing and forthright confident personality have ensured that nothing will prevent her from doing what she wants, Billie also understands that the right for women to have their voices heard, to be able to dress how they please, and even to be seen as cool and interesting were hard fought for in the pop world.
Billie has broken records as a female artist, including being the first female artist to win all the “big four” GRAMMYs and the only female artist to land fourteen songs on the Billboard Top 100 in a single week. In her Billboard Woman of the Year speech in December 2019, she thanked the women in the music industry who had “paved the way” for her success. Talking of Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, and others, she recognized that “women who, in the past, have done what they weren’t supposed to do, has made my life a lot easier and made me able to do what I want and be who I want.” She wants to be that kind of groundbreaker herself and has said how thrilled she is to be in the wave of new female artists (she mentions Princess Nokia, Jessie Reyez, and Kodie Shane) who get girls jumping and moshing at concerts, something that was once the domain of male acts.
Billie has made it abundantly clear that she doesn’t want to tell her supporters or anyone else what to think or do. This, of course, does not mean she always keeps her own views private. In 2019 she took to Instagram to say that she loves to go to Atlanta, Georgia, and play shows there, but objected to their lawmakers’ decision to take away women’s rights after the state clamped down on women’s access to abortion. She also joined Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, and other musicians in supporting the Planned Parenthood Federation’s campaign for reproductive rights.
Some point to Billie’s signature baggy clothes as being a rejection of sexualization of women in pop music. The reason for Billie’s style, however, is complicated and not necessarily a statement. It is bound up with her own fashion sense, her mental and physical comfort, and a desire to keep some of herself secret from the world. There is no doubt that in wearing loose-fitting, sometimes oversized clothes, Billie is refusing to conform to the media’s image of women singers, but she refuses to condemn those who do and has reserved the right to wear more revealing clothes if she should wish.
Billie was creating a real bond with fans—she was one of them, and they recognized it.
Billie was emerging as an incredible talent, as Europe now witnessed. The sellout tour went to Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and Berlin, and saw a return to London. Everywhere she went the small venues were packed, and she created a buzz that remained long after she’d gone. Billie was creating a real bond with fans—she was one of them, and they recognized it. At those intimate concerts, she could pick out every face, grasp every outstretched hand, meet with anyone who hung behind afterward, and even post Instagram mini-movies of them at the show. She wasn’t acting the star and had no intention of being one, but when it comes, it comes. And it was coming . . .
Chapter Seven
The One to Watch
Stop telling everyone you’re gonna make it, just mind ya business and go make it.
Billie had tweeted this during the tour, and she was certainly practicing what she preached and working like crazy. She was playing live, performing for YouTube channels, and even trying out her skills at live entertainment.
In October 2017 she and Finneas had performed acoustic versions of “COPYCAT” and “party favor” for the Mahogany Sessions YouTube channel. Against a deserted industrial setting, Billie, wearing an eye-catching spiked choker, gave an exquisite vocal and dramatic performance to just a guitar or ukulele accompaniment. This stripped-back version showed how authentic and beautiful her voice was. Then, while on tour in New York, she had appeared on MTV’s revived live show TRL, helping an audience member win $250 on “Older or Younger” (example question: “Is Billie older or younger than an iPhone?”), answering rapid-fire questions from DJ Khaled, and giving another different but still bewitching performance of “ocean eyes.”
All this had ensured the EP continued to be picked up by fans and the media with dont smile at me even breaking the US Billboard 200 Chart, reaching Number 185 in early November. Billie then issued a surprise release. She dropped a new track, named “bitches broken hearts,” that was available only on SoundCloud. This was a result of a collaboration with Emmit Fenn that had taken place a year before. Fenn’s track “Painting Greys” had been a viral hit around the same time as “ocean eyes” and Billie, taken by his captivating and idiosyncratic electronica sound, had wanted to work with him. On Facebook, Fenn explained, “The song was finished in a couple hours, no post production was done, no mixing, no mastering, we just thought it was perfect how it was.”
“Bitches broken hearts” is a goose-bump-inducing diatribe against an ex who hid his true feelings and paid the price by losing her. Against a moody synth backing and a beat intriguingly echoed by a deep male voice and snippets of crowd noise, Billie’s straight but incredibly powerful delivery summing up the aftermath of an emotional impasse cuts to the quick. Her soft, matter-of-fact vocals are magnificently undercut not only by the title line but also by the tragic penultimate line of “I guess being lonely fits me.” The track amassed more than six hundred thousand streams in its first week on SoundCloud and was enthusiastically received. Nylon magazine praised it as a “hypnotic ode to the bittersweetness of lost love and fresh starts,” while the influential music blog Pigeons & Planes extolled the track’s “woozy blend of electric piano, vocal samples and sparse percussion.”
A moody synth backing and a beat intriguingly echoed by a deep male voice and snippets of crowd noise.
It was the perfect time to announce the next tour. Titled the Wheres My Mind Tour, with reference to the line in “bellyache,” it was even more ambitious than the one they had just finished. Beginning in February, it scheduled in concerts in eight countries in Europe and seventeen shows across North America. Tickets for the tour sold out in less than an hour.
At the end of each year, the media like to predict who next year’s breakthrough artists will be, and in 2017 the name Billie Eilish was on many lips. Vevo were the first to name-drop her, putting her first on their “DSCVR Artists to Watch 2018” list. Billie and Finneas gave a live performance of “my boy” for them, and it was special. Billie’s vocals are so smooth, and she dances across the sparse room injecting so much energy into the song. Even Finneas joins in a brief synchronized dance. In the UK, the BBC also named her in its celebrated
Sound of 2018 list, voted for by critics, broadcasters, DJs, and other music-industry figures. She was the youngest-ever nominee for the title but didn’t land a place in its top five, with Norwegian singer Sigrid eventually topping the poll.
Lots of other magazines, blogs, and radio shows were quick to pick Billie as their one to watch for 2018, but for many she was already a favorite. New Zealand and neighboring Australia had been among the first countries to take her to their heart, and this was confirmed in December, when Billie appeared on the cover of New Zealand’s pop culture magazine Coup De Main. It was her first-ever magazine cover, and the photo was stunning. Wearing a bright yellow top, she was framed against a black background, her head tilted slightly to the left, her silver hair partially plaited at the front, with a gold chain and earrings (one a giant hoop), her pale lips forming that neutral nonsmile, and underneath the pronounced eyebrows a stare that pierces right through you, each eye accentuated by a thick red line running around it like a mask.
But before the year end, Billie had one more treat in store for new and old fans. On December 14, the track “&burn” appeared. Essentially a reworking of “watch,” it had one added ingredient: Vince Staples. For her first vocal collaboration, Billie had picked the hip-hop artist whose 2017 album Big Fish Theory had been a hit around the world over the summer. Billie had long been a fan of his innovative, boundary-pushing approach to rap, and Staples was her first choice when she considered who could feature on “&burn.”
“Watch” was originally going to be called “watch & burn” (a play on “watch and learn”), but when two very different versions emerged in the studio, the title was split between the two. “&burn” is an altogether moodier affair, with less piano and a production that plays with intriguing effects and Billie’s voice (including the addition of an extra syllable to “start-ted”). Billie and Finneas immediately felt it was perfect for a rap-break verse, and Staples’s rapid-fire, understated delivery fits effortlessly into the track. His contribution feels natural rather than a wedged-in guest appearance, and adds energy and variety to the pared-back version.
The track also added to Billie’s growing catalogue of diverse and addictive recordings. She remained a left-field artist, so though her tracks were all accumulating serious streaming and downloading numbers, they were still not big enough to earn her a spot on the charts. Among all this music-business talk, it is easy to forget that she was still a child. On December 18, 2017, Billie celebrated her sixteenth birthday. In the Coup De Main interview a month earlier she had said she had always wanted a sweet sixteen party, but now wasn’t sure. “I’m kind of in a transitional period with friends,” she told them. “So there’s not really anyone I feel that cares enough about me to be with me on my birthday.” Many find teenage friendship issues a problem, and for Billie, suddenly thrown into an adult world and spending so much time away from home, it was extra difficult.
Among all this music-business talk it is easy to forget that she was still a child.
We now know that for a lengthy period Billie had been suffering from depression. This was not just a matter of mood swings, but issues of anxiety, body image, insecurity, and irrational sadness that affects so many teenagers. Billie first revealed her problems with depression in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in July 2019, just a few months after she felt her own dark clouds had finally left her.
In this and in subsequent interviews she told how the injury that had prevented her from dancing had sent her into a downward spiral. This coincided with the original success of “ocean eyes” and continued through her seventeenth year—the blossoming of stardom that seemed so thrilling to the outsider. “I was so unhappy and joyless,” Billie told US TV host Gayle King in 2020, confessing, “I didn’t ever think I would be happy again, ever.” She credited the care of her mother, her love of playing the shows, and the chance to meet fans with helping her get through the hardest times. There were plenty of people who followed Billie on Twitter or watched her livestreams through this period who had an idea of what she was going through, but most, those who just watched her performances on YouTube or listened to the tracks, had little idea how she was feeling. At least now, with hindsight, we can review the events of 2018—the year in which it hit her hardest—in the context of her struggle with severe depression.
She credited the care of her mother, her love of playing the shows, and the chance to meet fans with helping her get through the hardest times.
“Idontwannabeyouanymore,” Billie’s most obvious depression song, had, with the exception of “ocean eyes,” proved to be the most popular of her tracks so far, and early in the new year it was given an official video release. Shot in a 16:9 ratio, so it can be best viewed on a cell phone, the video is set in a totally white room. Billie, dressed in an all-white, oversized hooded jumpsuit, sings while staring herself down in a mirror. That’s it. But she manages to fill it with drama and sad beauty. Meanwhile, proof of the enduring popularity of “ocean eyes” came in late January when the track received an official Gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The certification recognizes five hundred thousand units, with each unit representing one paid download or 150 streams.
Billie’s first engagements of 2018 came a long way from home. She was booked as one of the artists on the Laneway Festival. Featuring a number of indie-styled acts playing a series of festivals across Australia and New Zealand, Laneway has become one of the highlights of the summer Down Under. The festival also introduced Billie to a new continent, as the first event took place in Singapore.
Andrew Marshall
Before heading out on tour, Billie and Finneas decided to enlist a drummer to add energy and drama to their live show. After some auditions they found Andrew Marshall. Nearer to Finneas’s age than Billie’s, New Yorker Andrew had previously played with a number of bands—usually at the same time. They included pop rock duo Ex Cops, indie band Tigertown, and songwriting duo Marian Hill (who had remixed “bellyache”). What was key for Billie and Finneas was that, like them, Andrew liked to work across genres—from pop and trap to electronica and hip-hop—and that he was a modern drummer at ease with conventional and electronic drums, and playing a mixture of the two in what is called a hybrid kit.
Before stepping out onstage, Andrew has to adapt the sounds Finneas creates electronically into the live sound they are looking for. He is responsible not only for the beats but for playing any sampled sounds, such as doors slamming or glass breaking, at exactly the right moment. Sometimes they want to replicate the recorded sound of a song, and other times they deliberately alter it—perhaps giving it an acoustic feel or creating a dance vibe. His job is to work out and execute a live drum sound that fits their objectives and, at the same time, brings some real energy to the party.
Andrew’s debut with Billie and Finneas came in Singapore in 2017, and he stayed for the whole Wheres My Mind Tour. Despite being the outsider, he fit into the family setup that is Billie on tour and remained an integral, if unsung, member of the team as they progressed from playing three-hundred-capacity clubs to the world’s biggest festivals.
Billie shouted to the fans in Singapore that it was the first festival she’d played where anyone had turned out to see her. She took to the stage in a sports short suit—a baggy short-sleeved shirt and shorts that extend below the knee. It was a look beloved of rappers from Pharrell to A$AP and one we would soon get used to seeing Billie wear. This particular outfit was gold and black and bore the logo Damani Dada, a 1990s brand favored by hip-hop artists. It was also the same retro outfit Drake had attracted interest with when he wore it in his 2013 video for “No New Friends.”
Like nearly all of Billie’s shows, the Laneway concerts were restricted to ages eighteen and up (in the US many venues were even ages twenty-one and up). Often Billie herself, as a sixteen-year-old, would be confined to the backstage area. However, during the Laneway series, her booking agents did manage to squeeze in one all-
ages show back at the Tuning Fork in Auckland, and Billie and Finneas both had something special in store for the young audience.
First, Finneas appeared midway through the set with a new song, “New Girl,” a preview of his single, which was to be released the following week. Then, after “party favor,” Billie moved to the front of the stage, sat down, and made the crowd back up. Face-to-face with an audience (and their phones) largely of her own age, she sang “when the party’s over”—the first time it had ever been performed to anyone apart from her managers. As she started singing to Finneas’s soft piano accompaniment, a hush came over the crowd. It was a real shared moment for Billie and the fans in what she described as one of the most fun shows she’d ever had.
As she started singing to Finneas’s soft piano accompaniment, a hush came over the crowd.
“When the party’s over” portrays a relationship breaking down. Finneas had written it on his own in the autumn and had come up with the title to link it to “party favor.” Billie talked about how excited he was when he called her into his room so she could hear it. She had work to do, too, though, because the vocal line spanned several octaves and really tested the strength of her voice. Having rehearsed it, they decided to introduce it into the set soon—it was just a matter of choosing the right moment. Maybe considered too intimate for the festival crowd, the song wasn’t played at any of the other Laneway shows, but after Auckland it took its place in the set list for the small venues—and remained a favorite.
“When the party’s over” portrays a relationship breaking down.
The Laneway trip came to a close at the beginning of February, but before they left, Billie and Finneas had a parting gift for their fans Down Under (and everyone else thanks to YouTube). They appeared on Australian national alternative-music station Triple J to take part in their Like a Version session, where artists play a song of their own as well as a song by someone else that they love. They gave an acoustic performance of “bellyache,” once again astounding listeners with their ability to create different and spellbinding versions of their own songs. But they also showed they could do it with others’ compositions too. Their take on Michael Jackson’s “Bad” was the first cover we had heard Billie sing outside of the livestreams, and it was remarkable. She managed to own one of the most popular hits ever by turning it into a Billie Eilish song—slow, mellow, and real.
Billie Eilish, the Unofficial Biography Page 6
