Billie Eilish reveals harsh reality of fame: “I lost all of my friends when I got famous”
While Billie Eilish might be one of the most recognisable singers in the world, she has now opened up about the downsides of attaining global superstardom at such an early age.
The musician was only 14 years old when her debut single ‘Ocean Eyes’ was released, and she quickly found out the proverbial rocket had been strapped to her back. Her first EP, Don’t Smile at Me, was certified platinum in multiple countries, shifting over a million copies in the United States alone.
Eilish’s first full-length album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was nothing short of a monster, catapulting her into the rarefied air of being one of the biggest names in pop before she’d even left her teens, with follow-up Happier Than Ever marking an evolution in her sound but proving equally popular.
The former Glastonbury headliner has three Billboard Music Awards and nine Grammys to her name already, never mind the fact she’s the youngest person in history to win two Academy Awards after her original songs for James Bond sequel No Time to Die and Greta Gerwig’s all-conquering Barbie saw her become a two-time Oscar winner at the age of 21.
However, there are always downsides to dreams being achieved much quicker than the person chasing them could have imagined, and in Eilish’s case, it was her personal relationships that suffered. As she explained on Lilly Allen and Miquita Oliver’s Miss Me? podcast, available to listen to on BBC Sounds, celebrity status had a detrimental effect on her pre-existing friendships.
“Well, I lost all of my friends when I got famous. I suddenly was famous, and I couldn’t relate to anybody,” she said. “It was tough. It was really hard.” Only her best friend since childhood stuck by her during that ascent up the industry ladder, and that realisation hit even harder when she realised on a milestone anniversary that people her own age she could call friends were in very short supply.
“And then it was my 20th birthday, and I remember looking around the room, and it was only people that I employ. And all 15 years or more older than me,” she continued. “And it was the worst thing that happened to me. And that made me realise like, ‘Oh wait, this is a job, if they left me they would never see me again.'”
Since that moment, Eilish admits she finds it difficult to become friends with her team because she’s “very freaked out by loss, and I have a lot of abandonment problems.” On the plus side, the star did reveal that after reconnecting with many of her former acquaintances, she now has “a crew” of her very own, which she described as “the greatest thing that’s happened to me”.
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