Voice of a generation. Avatar of internet mega-fame. Icon of body positivity. A lot rests on Billie Eilish’s 19-year-old shoulders. The pop superstar speaks up about her latest transformation, new music and living life on her own terms.
The fans knew it was a wig. The parting was off. Some amateur had misaligned the green and black gradient. She stopped flipping her hair and started wearing a suspicious number of hats. Underneath it was red, they swore. One girl posted an 18-part TikTok investigation into the matter.
Meanwhile, Billie Eilish sweated, literally and figuratively, ruing the day she committed to spending months cosplaying as herself to hide the look of her second-album era. Before her custom hairpiece arrived, a last-minute video appearance forced her to buy a Billie Eilish Halloween costume from Amazon.
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The 19-year-old spends our first hour together absent-mindedly stroking the silky layers, besotted by the novelty. It took four dye sessions to erase the signature jet black and lurid green she’s worn for 18 months. She was “ready for it to suck”, but it’s been transformative. “I feel more like a woman, somehow,” she says, surprised.
Her viral breakout at 13 with the delicate synth-pop song “Ocean Eyes”, recorded with her older brother, Finneas O’Connell, in their bedrooms. The colourful family bungalow in north-east LA, where they were homeschooled by their parents, working actors Maggie May Baird and Patrick O’Connell, turned into an anchor and a hive of “good people” as this gothy teenager became an era-redefining pop star. She and Finneas recorded her debut album there, 2019’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, without label interference. Eilish’s career is a parade of achievements, mostly concerning her age: she’s the youngest winner of the Grammy for Album of the Year (an accolade formerly held by Taylor Swift) and to helm a Bond theme (“No Time To Die”, written for Daniel Craig’s final 007 gig), and is the first artist born in the 21st century to have an American number one. Her debut is Spotify’s eighth most-streamed album ever. More lastingly, her mysterious, broken sound rewired pop.
Her interests reflected the wide splatter of the teenage-girl heart: horror films, Justin Bieber, sports cars, Peggy Lee, gross-out humour, racial justice. Unlike previous generations of teen pop stars deprived of control over their identity, she sanitises nothing, singing of dying friends, suicidal ideation and the climate crisis. “I don’t think there’s ever been such a young pop artist to write songs that are so personal,” Elton John tells me. “Billie Eilish’s songs come from within her. She reminds me of Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan – a totally old soul from a vocal point of view. She doesn’t sound like anybody today.”
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