WOMEN WE LOVE: Billie Eilish

If there is one thing I know for sure, it’s that we don’t deserve Billie Eilish. Let me tell you why.

Back in October 2015, a then-13-year-old Billie heard a song her older brother Finneas was working on in his room across the hall and thought she might just be able to make it better. With a voice that sounds much larger than her age, Billie took “Ocean Eyes”, made it her own, and released it alongside her brother on Soundcloud in 2016. This was by no means the first time they had released a song, but it was the first time they got such a huge response to their work. Billie made the most of the attention, re-recording the song and making a video to go along with it, and the fans kept pouring in. “Ocean Eyes” is now platinum in multiple countries and shot Billie straight to the top of music headlines around the world.

That was 3 years ago, and almost everything has changed for Eilish, a girl from California who was homeschooled for her entire life. Following the success of “Ocean Eyes”, Billie released a debut EP (2017’s don’t smile at me), racked up an astounding billion streams on Spotify, collaborated with huge names like Khalid, performed at Coachella, toured, and just recently released her first full length album WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? ... and she hasn’t even turned 18 yet.

She is so wonderfully one-of-a-kind, in her music, her style, and her personality. There really isn’t a box or a genre you can stick Billie into… I guess that makes sense for a girl who has "Pirate" as a middle name (seriously, her full name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell). She was destined to be great. But for all her success, Billie hasn’t strayed too far from her roots. She wrote, recorded, and produced all of WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? with Finneas in his little bedroom across the hall from hers, and she still lives at home in the 2-bedroom house she grew up in, where her parents sleep in the living room so their kids can have their own rooms.

WHEN WE FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? debuted at #1 on both the Billboard 200 and the U.K. albums chart, making Billie the first artist born in the 2000s to have a #1 album in the U.S. Take that in -- she was born in 2001!!! I cannot compute. Anyways, Billie is a musical prodigy and did all of this while completing her Invisalign schedule and getting her driver's license. Billie, what more is there to say other than, we love you!!!