Read on Elle.
illie Eilish has to watch The Office while she does everything. “When I wake up, I put on The Office. If I’m making a burrito, I turn on The Office,” she says. The only scenario in which the 17-year-old singer-songwriter might not be streaming an episode is while working. “I need the distraction so I don’t think,” she says. “It’s like therapy for me. I have way too much to think about and people [I don’t want] to disappoint.” When asked whom, specifically, she is worried about letting down, she says, “Myself, mainly…and the whole world.”
She’s being hyperbolic, of course, but not by much. Eilish has 14.1 million followers (and counting) on Instagram. Her songs, including those from her 2017 debut EP, Don’t Smile at Me, have been streamed more than 5 billion times. As of this writing, the video for “Bury a Friend,” the third single off her first studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, has been out just over a week and viewed more than 35 million times—one million more than it was an hour ago. Eilish wasn’t exaggerating about The Office, either: She’s watched every episode of every season, 11 times over.
We’re sitting at the dining room table of the Los Angeles home where Eilish (full name: Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell) was raised. Her hair is blue, and her outfit—baggy knit pants and an oversize turtleneck—is white. Eilish’s mother, Maggie Baird, and father, Patrick O’Connell, pop in and out, corralling the dog—who growls a lot but is harmless—and checking to make sure we have water. This is the house where Billie was homeschooled, and where she still records with her older brother, Finneas O’Connell.
“Here’s the thing with homeschooling,” Eilish says, twiddling a tube of Aquaphor in her fingers, her Invisalign on the table next to her cell phone. “It gave me time to actually realize what I wanted to do early on. Music was never a hobby. It was always there.” It became a career when she and Finneas uploaded a haunting pop song called “Ocean Eyes” to SoundCloud. Within 24 hours, it went viral. Eilish was just 13 at the time, and she’s been on a high-speed trajectory ever since, this year especially. Just a few days into 2019, her name found its way onto the Coachella lineup flyer—in the second-largest font size. In March, she released her first full-length album. This summer, she’ll embark on her fourth sold-out North American tour.
It’s a lot, and Eilish is handling it…okay. “Honestly, I feel myself losing it a little, but I have my brother—we write everything together; he produces my stuff—and my mom and dad tour with me. When I’m away from home, at least I have my home with me, in a way.” Finneas has since moved out of the house, but they still make music in his old bedroom. “This is where we recorded every single thing we’ve done,” she says, holding the door open so I can take a peek. The room is just barely big enough to fit a bed, a keyboard, and a desk. Suddenly, the intimacy of her new album makes perfect sense. It opens with the siblings laughing about Eilish’s pre-recording ritual—“I have taken out my Invisalign!” she says. Song nine, “My Strange Addiction,” is laced with clips from her favorite TV show (The Office, in case anyone forgot).
When she’s not touring, Eilish still sleeps right across the hall. “You want to see?” she asks, opening the door. She climbs onto her bed and pulls back a Louis Vuitton scarf tacked to the wall. Behind it are words, phrases, drawings, and other scribblings. She points to a few markers taped nearby for easy access. “I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and just find a place to write,” she says. It’s still light outside now, but her room is dark due to shoe racks obscuring the windows. Her closet would make Marie Kondo proud—the top row is a neon rainbow organized by color, and the bottom is black and white—but there are piles on the floor. “Where am I supposed to put any of this?” she says.
Her room might be full of pricey designer goods, but her prized possession is her notebook, which she keeps hidden. “There’s a lot of personal stuff in here that I don’t even want my parents to read,” she says, pulling the slim volume out from its secret location. “This is my brainchild, the weird monsters I’ve dreamed about.” She flips through the pages, pausing on a poetry fragment near the front. “This is from years ago,” she says. A few pages later: “This is really hormonal 13-year-old Billie. Really sad, really heartbroken.
Oh my God!” She laughs—she’s landed on a page that says, in large letters illustrated in pencil, “I’m sad.” Sketches fill some of the pages, including one of a yellow outfit similar to the one she wore in her “Bellyache” video. “I always dress like this, and I always have,” she says of her style, a high-low hybrid of shiny accessories and oversize athletic wear, often monochromatic or highlighter-hued. “I want to be looked at. I want to be remembered. Even before I was an artist, I wanted to go out and see people’s heads look up.”
These days people look, sometimes too much. “I can’t really go anywhere, because I will get mobbed,” Eilish says. “I can’t get mad, though—if I decide to go out in public, I have to expect that to happen. But when people show up at my house or drop things off on my porch, that’s not okay.” She shrugs. She could go on, but such talk is “a waste of everyone’s time,” she says. Her fan base might be growing exponentially, but her family keeps her grounded. Eilish catches me taking one last peek inside Finneas’s room before heading out. “People always ask, ‘How does it feel to have started out in your brother’s tiny room, and now you’re in the big studio?’ ” she says. “But I’m not. I’m still in the same room.”