PREVIOUS SPREAD: SHIRT AND SHORTS BY PROBLEM BOY. CHOKER BY BITCH FIST. BRACELETS BY CHROME HEARTS. RINGS BY CHROME HEARTS AND SOUVENIR JEWELRY. OPPOSITE PAGE: SWEATER BY DIOR FROM NEIMAN MARCUS, BEVERLY HILLS. NECKLACES BY SYDNEY EVAN AND SHAY JEWELRY. BRACELET BY SHAY JEWELRY. EARRINGS BY STEFERE JEWELRY AND LOREE RODKIN. HAND CHAIN BY LOREE RODKIN.52 | Rolling Stone | August 2019
EY, BILLIE?” says Billie Eilish’s mom, standing in the
kitchen of their Los Angeles home. “Are you going to
clean your room?”
“Yeah,” says Eilish, 17, stretching her reply into
two no-duh syllables. Even from the couch, her eye
roll is audible.
Her mom turns to me. “Can she clean her room
while you talk? Is that OK?”
The Eilish home is on a leafy block in L.A.’s High-
land Park, a gentrifying semisuburban neighbor-
hood. The two-bedroom bungalow is cramped and
homey, with overflowing bookshelves and, currently,
five occupants: Eilish’s mom; Eilish’s dad; their cat,
Misha; their dog, Pepper; and the biggest, most excit-
ing new pop star of 2019.
Eilish’s debut album, When We All Fall Asleep,
Where Do We Go?, was released this past spring, and
has already been streamed more than 2 billion times.
Last week she was on tour in Australia, and tomor-
row she leaves for a festival in the U.K., and for the
next month she’s playing amphitheaters and are-
nas across the U.S. — every one sold out. But this af-
ternoon is a rarity for Eilish: a day at home with not
much to do. So she’s doing what any good 17-year-old
would, and wasting time on the internet while not
cleaning her room.
“Did you know broccoli is a man-made food?” says
Eilish, staring at her phone, to no one in particular.
“It doesn’t grow naturally.”
“Well, I picked broccoli as a kid,” says her mom.
“No, you did not,” counters Eilish. “I’m looking at
it on Safari.”
Eilish was born in December 2001, making her the
first artist with a chart-topping album to be born this
millennium. She’s so Gen Z, she makes twentysome-
things feel ancient. She’s never bought a CD. She says
things like, “I’m never gonna be 27 — that’s too old.”
She’s also probably the only pop star who still sees a
pediatrician. (“It’s weird,” says her mom. “There’s a
waiting room full of four-year-olds, and then there’s
Billie Eilish.”)
Eilish has conquered the music world in part by
doing everything you’re not supposed to. Her music
is darker and weirder than that of most teen pop
stars, with a gothy, punkish edge and nary a hint of
bubblegum. For her core teen-girl fan base, she’s
like the cool sen ior in art class who dresses and acts
the way they wish they could: stylish, outrageous,
maybe a little dangerous. (As her hit single “Bad
Guy” puts it, “I’m the bad type, make-your-mama-
sad type... might-seduce-your-dad type.” You get the
sense that she’d love to be a “Parents Beware” seg-
ment on the 11:00 news.) Her vibe is both semi-nihil-
ist and joyously defiant, a perfect soundtrack for a
generation that faces a half-dozen existential threats
before first period. But she’s also playful, mischie-
vous, vulnerable, alienated, melancholy — in other
words, a teen.
Unlike previous generations of pop idols — your
Nickelodeon alums and Simon Cowell constructs —
Eilish also got where she is more or less organically.
Four years ago, she uploaded to SoundCloud a gor-
geous ballad called “Ocean Eyes,” which she sang
and her older brother, Finneas, wrote and produced.
The song was meant for Eilish’s dance teacher, who’d
asked for a song to choreograph a routine to. But
when it went viral essentially overnight, the industry
came calling. She had a billion streams on Spotify be-
fore her album was even out.
Not that Eilish is impressed with it all. The first
sound on her album is the adolescent slurp of her
taking her Invisalign out, and that kind of zero-fucks
authenticity sums up her style. Her music — still
made by two siblings in their bedrooms — stands out
in a pop universe where everything is made by the
same seven or eight pros, and her lack of pretense
and disregard for bullshit surely have a lot to do with
her success. “We often have to tell Billie why some-
thing is important,” says her mom. Her dad — who
says Eilish “has no tolerance for people she’s not in-
terested in and doesn’t give a shit whether you like
her or not” — recalls a day recently when a bunch of
execs from her label gave her a plaque. “A different
artist would be completely gassed to get a gold record
with their name on it,” he says. “But Billie’s response
was, ‘What am I gonna do with a fucking plaque?’ ”
In photos, Eilish rarely smiles, but in person, she’s
funny, goofy, and entertainingly dramatic. She makes
great faces, and even when she’s being bratty, it’s
usually with a wink. Her hair, often blue, is today
dyed a deep espresso, and her signature streetwear
look — hoodie, basketball shorts, Air Jordans — is
fashionably oversized and androgynous. Her fingersare spiked with silver rings (“She’s a pain in the butt
at airports,” says her tour manager), and her nails are
tipped with frightening two-inch acrylics that look
like dragon’s talons. “They’re supposed to be skin
color, but they’re turning pink, and I hate it,” Eilish
says. “I tried to re-color them, but I don’t know what
the fuck I’m doing.”
Eilish’s fame has jumped exponentially this year,
and she’s still figuring it all out. It’s a pretty steep
learning curve. Recently she came down with multi-
ple rashes, and a doctor said it was her body’s way
of telling her she needed to rest. Her home address
also leaked online, and three fans showed up in a sin-
gle day, including a creepy older guy who’d driven all
the way from San Diego. For a time, they had a body-
guard sleeping in the living room. “It was really trau-
matizing,” says Eilish. “I completely don’t feel safe in
my house anymore, which sucks.”
This afternoon, the family is hectically pack-
ing, getting ready for a month on the road. Her dad
runs to their storage space to pick up Eilish’s elec-
tric scooters, while her mom does her laundry and
makes her lunch in between packing Eilish’s suitcase.
At one point she comes over with a portable Blue-
tooth speaker. “Honey, are we taking this?”
“No,” Eilish says, “I’m taking my backpack.” (She
has a backpack with built-in speakers.)
“Well, do you want this one as a backup?”
“No,” Eilish says again.
“You’re 100 percent sure?”
Eilish sighs. “You can bring it,” she says. “But I
don’t need it.”
“OK,” her mom says, “so I’ll bring it, then?”
Eilish throws up her hands. “Oh, my God.”
Truth be told, Eilish isn’t really looking forward
to this tour. In fact, she’s kind of dreading it. She al-
ready has virtually no freedom in the world, on ac-
count of being 17. She hates being away from her
friends for so long — she knows when she gets back,
they’ll all dress differently and have new inside jokes.
“It’s annoying,” she says. “I have this amazing thing
in front of me, and I don’t want to hate it — and I don’t
hate it. But I hate certain parts of it.”E
ILISH’S BRAIN HAS always worked a little
differently. As a child, she was diagnosed
with Tourette syndrome, which for her
manifests as barely noticeable tics: a slight
bulging of her eyes, a twitching of her head to one
side. She’s usually able to suppress them, though
certain things seem to trigger attacks (e.g., math).
She also experiences synesthesia, the neurosensory
wire-crossing in which senses blend together. “Every
person I know has their own color and shape and
number in my head,” she says. Finneas, for example,
is an orange triangle (though the name Finneas is
dark green). Her song “Bad Guy” “is yellow, but also
red,” she says. “And the number seven. It’s not hot,
but warm, like an oven. And it smells like cookies.”
Eilish is actually her middle name. Before she was
born, her parents, Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Con-
nell, saw a documentary about conjoined Irish twins,
Katie and Eilish Holton, and decided if they ever had
a daughter, they would name her Eilish. But when
Maggie was pregnant, her father, Bill, passed away,
so they named her Billie after him instead. Eilish
never liked her actual last name. “It sounds like if a
goat was a person,” she says. “Billie Goat O’Connell.”BILLIE EILISH
Contributing editor JOSH EELLS profiled Lil Nas X
in the June issue.
‘H
Eilish isn’t really
looking forward to
her upcoming tour.
“It’s annoying,” she
says. “I have this
amazing thing in
front of me, and I
don’t want to hate
it — and I don’t
hate it. But I hate
certain parts of it.”