Music
15-year-old Billie Eilish is wise beyond her years
We spoke with the LA native ahead of her second jaunt to Australia for Laneway Festival.
A big injection of fresh, young blood has hit the music scene of late and it’s been a welcome change. Like in industries such as advertising, business and marketing, these young people bring a myriad of bright ideas and a refreshing outlook to the same stale processes, despite having less experience in the field. Don't underestimate them. In the music world, many teens have been dominating, from 19-year-old Khalid who just wrapped up numerous sold out shows here, 20-year-old Camila Cabello who just scored her first ARIA #1 single with Havana, to recently-21 pop queen Lorde, whose achievements since the age of 16 hardly need recapping. Locally, 20-year-old Sydney singer/songwriter Odette and 14-year-old Ruel have been pricking up Australian ears, too.
Los Angeles born and raised, Billie Eilish is another such addition to the music scene and at only 15, she’s one of the youngest out there. With only an eight-track EP, dont smile at me, and a handful of singles to her name, Eilish has been turning heads with her poised, plush and thoughtful indie-pop tunes and delicate vocals. Juxtaposed with a strong and sassy online presence and a distinctively DGAF fashion sense, it’s no surprise people are paying attention to the teen.
“I started writing when I was 11 because I had some stuff on my mind and I didn’t really know how to say it, I guess,” Eilish starts. “My brother writes songs and he had already been writing for a while, and my mum writes songs and she taught me how to write, basically. I basically just thought it was cool and didn’t think it was anything different – it was kind of just what my family was doing, so I was like, ‘why not I do it?’ So I did it and I kept doing it.
“[Music has] always been part of my life, it’s never been a question. It’s been like this since the beginning of time. My family’s just always been musical and I never thought of it as anything special or different. I mean, I liked it and I thought it was special for me but I didn’t know that, like, not everyone in the whole world’s family was writing music and singing all the time.”
My family’s just always been musical and I never thought of it as anything special or different.
The brother Eilish is referring to is actor Finneas O'Connell, a cast member on Glee and a musician/producer in his own right. Seeing as they lived “like, three feet apart” at their family home, Eilish and O’Connell started working together just because they could, after O’Connell taught himself how to record and produce. He’s four-and-a-half years her senior, which Eilish decides is “perfect”.
“If it was any bigger of a difference, or any smaller, I feel like we’d be too similar and bicker or too different and we’d just hate each other.”
She’s got a fairly deep voice, seemingly at odds with her uber-sweet singing, and despite her constant deadpan expression in photos, she gets quite animated. She seems like a typical Gen Z kid, starting sentences with ‘dude’ and retorting with ‘ewww’ if something unsavoury is mentioned, but make no mistake, Eilish is far more mature than the average high schooler. Despite being home-schooled her entire life, Eilish explains it hasn’t stopped her having a social life or a heap of friends.
“The thing is, it doesn’t mean you’re a loner. Like, I have more friends than ALL of my friends have, y’know? I’m a social person and if you are, you’re gonna go out and hang out with people and do things, and the internet exists so you meet people there and so I used to go tons of parties. I was always out, every single freakin’ day, places out with people. So it didn’t really matter that I wasn’t at school,” she explains.
When asked how she deals with older people in the music industry doubting her decisions and desires, solidified as they are, due to her age, she has another nugget of wisdom to share.
“The thing is, I always know what I want. Literally I’ve never not known what I want. I can be like, ‘I don’t care what you say, this is what I want and this is how I want it to look and sound,’ and all of that. It’s all in my brain, all there, all being formed. At the beginning of all this, I didn’t know that I COULD feel that way? I knew I did, but I just didn’t know that I was allowed to in this industry,” Eilish ponders aloud.
“Once I realised that and I learnt that what I want is what I’m gonna get and people are either going to like it or not, I stuck with that. I think, especially everyone on my team and on my label and everything, they understood that and I think they were like, ‘okay, we trust you.’ I feel like I’ve proved myself. Now I can basically work for what I want and have it happen and have people just help me out to [achieve that]. I feel very honoured for that, because I know a lot of – especially girls and young girls and boys – people don’t take you seriously, or people take you for granted or whatever. For me, I’m lucky to have people who take me seriously.”
Eilish’s fully formed creative decisions arrive hand-in-hand with her synesthesia, a neurological condition in which one sense (such as hearing) is perceived with additional senses or physical attributes (such as shapes or colours). Lorde and Pharrell are synesthetes too.
“When the [song] production is happening, I think of different shapes and different numbers and different days of the week. For me, Tuesday for me is a purple oval, which is really weird, but that’s just how my brain works,” she chuckles. “It’s not weird to me, it’s always been like that; it’s just natural. Sunday is a white triangle and Saturday is a black rectangle. My music kind of goes along with that. That may be part of the reason why I know what I want – my brain does it for me without me really trying.”
She’s also got rock solid opinions on everything from musical genres to fashion, with the two tied closely in terms of her creative expression.
Sunday is a white triangle and Saturday is a black rectangle.
“I don’t like the idea of genres, I don’t like that you have to take a song that you like and put it in a box of other things like that in the same box. I think it’s so stupid. I wanna like music because I like music, instead of liking genres because they’re cool or better. I try to make music that anyone could like, anyone in any genre at all. I’m super influenced by hip hop and rap and that stuff, so for me, I wanna be able to make real heartfelt songs with melodies with the influences of hip hop and rap and alternative and a ton of different stuff. I’m gonna keep changing, I’m not a certain genre, I’m everything in one,” she finishes.
On fashion and her eclectic ‘90s street- and sports-wear influenced look, which she shares extensively on her Instagram, Eilish says, “I just think clothes are sick, and that clothes are more than clothes. A shirt isn’t just something you put over your body to make you warmer, it’s art. I think of it that way so when I dress the way I dress, I’m showing my art and what I’m interested in, instead of ‘these are the things I’m wearing today because it’s hot out’. I style myself and always have. I just like weird stuff!”
Thrifting neon-hued tracksuits, oversized jackets and clunky sneakers for mere dollars at vintage stores, thrown in with a few select Louis Vuitton, Gucci, OFF-WHITE or Vetements pieces (“Vetements is sooo sick, my god!”), she says she’s keen to start her own clothing line in the future.
“Some people say, like, they’ve been obsessed with fashion their whole life and I don’t think I’d ever say that about myself. The idea of fashion sounds more like the brands and the fabric and the runway, but for me it’s just been about the clothes itself and what looks WEIRDEST and cool to me. So yeah, I really wanna have a clothing line, I’m heading towards it.”
Having wrapped up a successful (sold out!) promotional trip to Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland this September, Eilish is now gearing back to return for St Jerome’s Laneway Festival next February.
“Dude, Australia is beautiful, I’m super hyped to come back!” Eilish says excitedly. “Yeah it was a great trip! New Zealand is beautiful, my god! [I probably liked] New Zealand best, I just thought it was like… so homey to me. I dunno, LA is so hot and gross all the time and not very pretty, and New Zealand was just so, you know, there was nature! And it was green! And it was cloudy! I mean, LA weather can be really good sometimes, you know, like December and January, but other than that it’s hot, hot, horrible, death oven.”
Billie Eilish returns to Australia in February to play at St Jerome's Laneway Festival with Bonobo, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Father John Misty, Loyle Carner and more. Find out more here.
Follow Billie Eilish on Instagram here.