Biography
Date of Birth
18 December 2001, Los Angeles, California, USA
Birth Name
Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell
Height
5' 3½" (1.61 m)
Trivia
Billie was named after her maternal grandpa, Bill Baird who died before she was born. Her middle name, Eilish is the Irish form of Elizabeth. Pirate came from Finneas because he really wanted her to be named that, Baird is her mom's maiden name & O'Connell is her paternal family surname. Originally, she was going to be named Eilish Pirate O'Connell.
Younger sister of Finneas O'Connell.
Daughter of Maggie Baird and Patrick O'Connell.
Said that she prefers to wear baggy clothing in order to avoid being sexualized.
She is the first artist born in the 21st century to top the Billboard 200.
Grew up listening to The Beatles, Green Day, Avril Lavigne, and Justin Bieber.
Hip hop music is her favorite genre and biggest inspiration.
Raised in Los Angeles' Highland Park.
She began singing at a young age and began writing songs at age 11, taking after her elder brother Finneas O'Connell, who was already writing, performing, and producing his own songs with his band.
Her mother Maggie Baird taught improv to Melissa McCarthy who is now Eilish's fan.
Joined the Los Angeles Children's Chorus at age 8.
She is of Irish and Scottish descent.
She has cited Tyler the Creator and Donald Glover as major musical and style influences for her, and other influences include Earl Sweatshirt and Lana Del Rey.
She was raised vegetarian and regularly advocates for veganism on social media.
She has been compared in the media to both Lorde and Lana Del Rey, the latter of whom she says she does not want to be compared to, saying in a Los Angeles Times interview, "That woman [Lana] has made her brand so perfect for her whole career and she shouldn't have to hear that.".
She has named Rihanna as an inspiration for her style choices, after she called fashion her "defense mechanism" during an acceptance speech.
Most of her song titles are written in lower case.
Became the youngest artist in history to write and perform a James Bond theme, which she did for No Time to Die (2021).
Has synesthesia, which causes her to see music as colors. She uses this condition to her advantage, as it has a great influence on the style of her music videos.
(February 9, 2020) Performed at the Oscars during the In Memoriam sequence with a song "Yesterday" along with her brother Finneas O'Connell.
Won five Grammy Awards in 2020 becoming the second person (after Christopher Cross in 1981), first woman and the youngest person ever to win the four main Grammy categories, Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year in the same year.
Since 2017, does the "same interview" every year on October 18th, 2 months before her birthday, with Vanity Fair.
Trademarks:
Dyed Hair
Chains
Low key singing voice.
Song titles written in all lower-case.
Baggy clothing
Quotes
I've always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.
In the public eye, girls and women with strong perspectives are hated. If you're a girl with an opinion, people just hate you. There are still people who are afraid of successful women, and that's so lame.
I hate smiling. It makes me feel weak and powerless and small. I've always been like that; I don't smile in any pictures.
Me and my brother get along super well. We're, like, best friends. So we'll stay up until, like, five just talking because we get along and, you know, it's cool. And he respects my opinions, and I respect his, even if we don't have the same opinions, but a lot of the time we do.
In real life, I'm a really smiley person. I smile when I talk and I laugh.
If I'm in a bad mood, or if I'm uncomfortable, it's probably what I'm wearing that's making me feel that way.
It's rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.
People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.
Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won't last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don't realize that.
There are always going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it.
I'm not going to say I'm cool, because I don't really feel that. I just don't care at all, and I guess that's what people think is cool.
If it's good music, it's good music.
I'm a really particular person. I want it my way.
I really wanted to be a model when I was little. I loved photography, and I loved being on camera. But I was short and chubby, so I couldn't. Anyway, being an artist is way more interesting than just being a model because it's about you and what you want to be. You're not being treated like a clothes hanger.
I work with my brother Finneas, and he produces all of my music in his little bedroom in our house. We actually tried renting out a studio for a month when we were producing 'Don't Smile at Me,' but it was really hard there, and we ended up just doing it at home anyway.
Lyrics are so important, but they're really underrated.
I like to be in control of how I look and how I feel and how I act.
I've always liked being busy. If I have nothing to do for a week, it just makes me mad.
It's really fun to put yourself into a character - into shoes you wouldn't normally be in.
Clothing & fashion are kind of my security blanket, almost.
I listen to music all day every day. I can't not listen to music. It's kind of scary how much I listen to music, but it's what I love, and it's all I care about, so I'm good with it.
I don't even call them fans. I don't like that. They're literally just a part of my life; they're a part of my family. I don't think of them as on a lower level than me. I don't think I'm anything but equal to all of them. So yeah, they're basically all of my siblings.
I always wear the kind of stuff that makes you overheat and die.
I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is - I don't even want to say that it's mine, because it's yours.
If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I'll die someday, and one day, they will too.
'Bellyache' is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren't real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don't know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.
I felt like, for so many years - and I still even feel it - as a girl, you can't really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.
Sexism is everywhere, bro. I don't know if it's ever not somewhere.
I really like hip-hop and rap; that's my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.
People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It's a story.
Time is kind of an amazing thing because you can do so much with it. I think people underestimate time... I don't want to just sit on my phone for hours.
I love movement. I love moshing.
Nothing really scares me, to be honest.
I play piano and ukulele, and I taught myself those things just because I wanted to play them.
What makes a song last is real content from a mind that is thinking a little bit harder about certain things. A lot of artists don't really think that hard.
When I write, I try to become different characters.
Aside from singing, I'm also a dancer. I've been dancing since I was 8.
I wrote my first song at 12 and remember someone asking, 'What were you going through at 12 that you could write about?' I get what you're saying, but 11, 12, 13 were the hardest years of my life. You learn everything. You learn how horrible things feel.
I used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called 'Fingers Crossed,' which is on SoundCloud.
I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I've never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.
I think everybody deserves an equal amount of appreciation whether how old they are, but I mean, I'm cool with the praise. I'm good.
I've always been a singer. I never really decided I was gonna be a singer. It just kind of - I just sung a lot.
Pretty much my whole life, I've been a performer and have loved singing and writing songs in my room for my own ears.
I really love Linkin Park, and I loved Chester Bennington, and it is horrible what happened to him. I grew up listening to him because my dad would make these mixtapes with a lot of different artists - Linkin Park, Avril Lavigne, The Beatles, Sarah McLachlan, I just really loved Linkin Park, and their production is really sick.
I grew up on the Beatles; I love Linkin Park and Green Day. I heard hip-hop for the first time at 11 and realized what I was missing.
You can write a song about being in love with someone, but you don't have to be in love with anyone.
I always want to create and do things, or draw.
When I was four, I wrote a song about falling into a black hole.
I always wanted to be a Vine star. I wasn't, thank God.
I don't know how to function without music. When I'm not making it, I'm listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.
Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.
I'm a really artistic person, and so, with the live stuff, there's a lot that I think is really cool. Beyonce and Rihanna have all these dancers. So with the live costumes and video costumes, I'd really like to have my vision. The way that I want people to dress is very specific. I love fashion.
Being an artist doesn't just mean you have a song. That doesn't make you an artist. The word 'artist' means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists - Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West - are doing the most.
I'm gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they're gonna like. It doesn't really matter.
I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don't. If you have that inside of you and can't get it out, what do you do?
Sometimes it's flattering when people copy you, but sometimes it gets to a breaking point.
I don't really get nervous that much, or if I do, only I know. It's all inside me. I am good at hiding everything.
I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.
I love people talking about me; I love anybody just looking at me.
I feel like I might be a designer or stylist - or a director because I have always been super interested in cameras and editing.
I've been in the Los Angeles Children's Chorus since I was 8.
I love to watch videos, and I've always liked to film and take pictures. I have an eye for really weird things that nobody thinks about. I used to make little movies about myself and then edit them on iMovie.
When I do have free time, I spend it with friends, or I spend it at home writing or making something.
Some artists just ruin their voices because they don't know any better.
All of the Vines that were acted & setup & had nice cameras, those weren't the good Vines. The good Vines were, like, a random little kid in the middle of a forest, like, yelling.
People have so much going on in their heads. I'm like, If you could write a song, you'd feel so much better!
I don't want people at my shows to come out and say, 'I just saw a cool show.' I want them to say, 'I had fun at the show.' I want it to be a collaborative thing and be part of the audience and have them be part of me. I try to interact with everyone there and have them be equal to me because they are.
If you write in the same way over and over again, like, in the same place with the same techniques and with the same people, you're sort of writing the same song over and over again.
I'm super self-critical, which I think is good, because then I get exactly what I want. I'm critical of other people, too - I try not to be, though.
What inspires me about rap is that it's written in an almost poetic way. I just think it's so cool.
I never thought a career as a musician was possible.
It's really fun to be on stage in front of people.
I have so many designs and video ideas and lyrics in my head, so I always try to be productive.
I find a lot of inspiration through visuals. When I was 12, I saw Aurora's 'Runaway' music video. Something inside me clicked, like, 'That is what I want to do, no matter whether it goes anywhere or not.'
My whole life, I've sung and listened to music, and since the beginning, I've had iTunes and used Apple Music for streaming.
My brother had written 'Ocean Eyes,' and we recorded it, basing all of the production around contemporary and lyrical dance. I think of most songs that way - if you can't dance to a song, it's not a song.
We uploaded 'Ocean Eyes' to SoundCloud, and it started getting a lot of plays pretty much immediately.
Writing music is just like writing a book.
Getting recognized is insane. It just blows my mind. Like, someone who you don't know at all can just be like, 'Oh my God - are you Billie?'
I don't think a song should be put in a category.
If I'm inspired to make a certain kind of song, I'm going to make that kind of song, no matter if it's what they know me as or think I am.
I used to make little movies when I was younger. I'd make my friends be in them and then edit them.
I think it's really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.
Pirate was going to be my middle name, but then my uncle had a problem with it because pirates are bad.
Writing a song is so personal. You have to have trust in someone you're working with; otherwise, you're not gonna come out with something that's really you.
I'm pretty sure I don't have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They're all either about, like, 'I hate you,' or 'You make me hate me.'
I'm trying to show everybody that I'm a girl, and I'm five foot four, and you can do anything you want, no matter your gender. It's your world, too!
I don't see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear 'pop,' you're like, 'Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,' and I feel like, 'Uh-uh. That's not me.'
[on critics of the age difference in her friendship with Drake] "The internet is such a stupid-ass mess right now. Everybody's so sensitive. A grown man can't be a fan of an artist? There are so many people that the internet should be more worried about. Like, you're really going to say that Drake is creepy because he's a fan of mine, and then you're going to go vote for Trump? What the fuck is that shit?"
