Billie Eilish

“I’m the bad guy.” You’ve probably heard these lyrics on the radio before. ‘Bad Guy’ by Billie Eilish peaked at #1 on August 24th in 2019 on the Billboard Hot 100 which made a major boost to Eilish’s career. You’ve also probably heard other songs by her like ‘Bury A Friend’, ‘Everything I Wanted’, or ‘Lovely’ which have all peaked on the Hot 100 too. Today we will go through her early life and biography!

Growing Up ‘Musically’

Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell was born on December 8th 2001 to Patrick O’Connell and Maggie Baird. Her father had made a few guest appearances in movies like Iron Man, Life Inside Out, and Cyborg 2, but O’Connell mainly focused on his career as a construction worker. Her mother is an actress and screenwriter, but didn’t get very successful in the jobs. Although it may not seem like Eilish had a lot growing up, she lived in a middle class family and had a huge influence on music in her life. She was homeschooled growing up. Her mother taught her subjects at home like math and science, while her brother commonly known as FINNEAS taught her basics in songwriting. In Eilish’s concerts and shows, you will see FINNEAS harmonizing or playing a keyboard beside her.

Living Online

Billie Eilish is a 21st century kid, so she was and is very up to date with current day social media. The singer used Vine, a social media app that many kids used before it got shut down. Sometimes it’s weird to see a celebrity grow right in front of your eyes. Anyways, Eilish was influenced by social media at a very young age, which also kick-started her career. Here are some of her vines, which are kinda funny.

Starting Off

Eilish started writing music and recording little songs here and there. She wrote her first song when she was 11 for her mom’s songwriting class. The song’s theme was a zombie apocalypse, inspired by the show “The Walking Dead” (Who watches TWD at 11 years old?) She also started auditioning for small roles in shows like ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’, ‘Ramona and Beezus’, and the ‘X-Men Series’. She already had quite a bit for a resume! Don’t forget the fact that she joined the Los Angeles Children’s Choir at age 11.

She's Broken

2015

With the artist’s brother, FINNEAS, Eilish started writing new songs and releasing them on soundcloud. At the time, FINNEAS was in a little band which he wrote songs with and he showed to his little sister. They wrote two songs called, ‘She’s Broken’ and ‘Fingers Crossed’ and posted them online “just for fun.” Later on, FINNEAS gave Eilish a song of his called ‘Ocean Eyes’ for a camp. In the camp, they had to post the song online. After Eilish posted the song on SoundCloud, she got thousands of streams on the song in a couple weeks. Today, ‘Ocean Eyes’ 720, 949, 373 streams on Spotify. I would say that the song is a huge hit!

Fingers Crossed

2016

To start off the year, Eilish and her brother got so much fame that they made a deal with Apple Music, and got their single ‘Ocean Eyes’ and many other songs to get on the platform. Apple signed Eilish and FINNEAS the A&R company Platoon which gets many singers to join big record companies. She even got enough publicity to get noticed by companies like Chanel who shaped her as an artist. Eilish started shooting a music video, which has more than 344 million views today. This is when Eilish got calls from many marketers, media outlets, radio stations, and even musical supervisors like Beats 1, KCRW, BBC One, Zane Lowe, Jason Kramer, Annie Mac, and Chris Douridas. In June, she released another single called ‘6 Feet Under’ which wasn’t as much of a hit, but still was an extraordinary song. The homemade music video has over 29 million views on youtube, which is still a lot of streams. That August, Eilish got signed by Justin Lubliner’s record label, Darkroom and Interscope Records. The record re-released her songs ‘6 Feet Under’ and ‘Ocean Eyes’ which got much more attention than before. She had also released a dance performance video for ‘Ocean Eyes.

2016

To start off the year, Eilish and her brother got so much fame that they made a deal with Apple Music, and got their single ‘Ocean Eyes’ and many other songs to get on the platform. Apple signed Eilish and FINNEAS the A&R company Platoon which gets many singers to join big record companies. She even got enough publicity to get noticed by companies like Chanel who shaped her as an artist. Eilish started shooting a music video, which has more than 344 million views today. This is when Eilish got calls from many marketers, media outlets, radio stations, and even musical supervisors like Beats 1, KCRW, BBC One, Zane Lowe, Jason Kramer, Annie Mac, and Chris Douridas. In June, she released another single called ‘6 Feet Under’ which wasn’t as much of a hit, but still was an extraordinary song. The homemade music video has over 29 million views on youtube, which is still a lot of streams. That August, Eilish got signed by Justin Lubliner’s record label, Darkroom and Interscope Records. The record re-released her songs ‘6 Feet Under’ and ‘Ocean Eyes’ which got much more attention than before. She had also released a dance performance video for ‘Ocean Eyes.’

idontwanttobeyouanymore

2017

The artist started off the year by releasing 2 EPs, one based off of ‘Ocean Eyes’ and the other one based off of ‘6 Feet Under.’ After this, she released a hit single named ‘Bellyache’. By 2019, ‘Bellyache’ had over 100 million streams, and I’m guessing that it has much more now! 2017 also included many more ideal moments for Eilish, like getting her single, ‘Bored’ on the netflix film’s ‘13 Reasons Why’ soundtrack which also featured ‘Back To You’ by Selena Gomez and ‘Ti Pan Boy’ by Youngblud and Apple Music showcasing Eilish at the South by Southwest music festival. As if this year couldn’t get any better, Eilish released big news that drove fans crazy. Eilish released her first REAL E.P., ‘Don’t Smile At Me’, which featured many hit songs like ‘Copycat’ and ‘idontwannabeyouanymore’. ‘idontwannabeyouanmore’ now has a little over 600 million plays on Spotify, and the song has a deep meaning of not wanting to be in your own skin anymore, and telling yourself “I don’t wanna be you anymore.” ‘Don’t Smile at Me’ peaked at 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, Eilish started to go on her first world-wide tour for ‘Don’t Smile at Me’, and even released her own mini-documentary with Apple Music on YouTube, but Eilish is just getting started with her fame.

You should see me in a crown

2018

While the artist had just finished her world-wide ‘Don’t Smile at Me’ tour, the singer started a second tour, the ‘Where’s My Mind Tour.’ The name is inspired by a lyric in her single, ‘Bellyache’ that repeatedly recites, “Where’s my mind, where’s my mind, where’s my mind, where’s my mind.” Eilish wrote another single with the artist, Khalid, called ‘Lovely.’ Now, if you haven’t heard the song ‘Lovely’ you definitely didn’t have any music streaming app, because this song was a HUGE hit. Lovely had over 1 billion streams on Spotify, and the song made the entire world go crazy. A popular social media app called TikTok had challenges of fans singing riffs from the song and many other creators got noticed by singing her song. ‘Lovely’ had also been streamed on the show ‘13 Reasons Why.’ That’s how amazing the song is. Anyways, Eilish released another hit single, ‘You Should See Me In A Crown’ which also got lots of love from the internet.

Bellyache