Why Billie Eilish hated making her debut album
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Credit: Press
The first moment Billie Eilish felt like she’d made it
Billie Eilish has broken too many records to count in her career, including becoming the youngest headliner in the history of the Glastonbury Festival. The young pop star has surpassed many milestones on her journey to Pilton, and the first remains one of the sweetest.
Much of her story is down to the impact of Eilish’s creative parents, Patrick O’Connell and Maggie Baird, who helped put her on the right path. Rather than give her a traditional education, Eilish’s parents homeschooled their children. From an early age, the O’Connell Jr’s were educated on the importance of using art to express themselves, with their curriculum emphasising creativity on the same level of importance as conventional subjects.
Her career first got underway in 2015 when she asked her brother, Finneas O’Connell, to create a piece of music that she needed to choreograph for her dance class. O’Connell fulfilled her wishes by giving her ‘Ocean Eyes’, but he felt she should add her voice to the recording because it was more suitable than his.
For accessibility purposes, and with little expectation, Eilish uploaded the track to SoundCloud primarily so her teacher could access the song online. However, ‘Ocean Eyes’ soon earned viral status on the streaming platform, and before she knew it, Eilish had secured a record deal with Interscope following the immediate success.
The moment she discovered something special was happening with the song was unforgettable for Eilish. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2019, Eilish recalled: “I used to have dance everyday, and I always had a different schedule everyday. So I remember that day I had four classes and had an hour break in-between two of them. I remember on one of those days, and it was either the day we put ‘Ocean Eyes’ out or the day after. I was sitting in Starbucks, it was cold outside, and I think it was raining, and I was just sitting there when my brother called me. He was like, ‘Dude, ‘Ocean Eyes’ has a thousand plays’. A thousand?”
It seemed unfathomable to the budding musician that a thousand people had listened to ‘Ocean Eyes’ in such a short span of time. Although Eilish’s songs now get millions of streams within the first day of being released, and 1,000 listens is microscopic in comparison, the dopamine hit is weaker.
Eilish continued: “Now, it’s like an ant, it’s still a lot of people, but it’s just funny how different it is to now, but then, he called me to tell me because it was such a big deal. I remember being like, ‘For real?’ I was sitting in Starbucks and got so excited that I was yelling on the phone. It was such a moment. We were on the phone, freaking out about it for so long that I looked at my phone to check the time, and it was after my next class had already started”.
Watch the footage below of Eilish performing the track which started it all during her historic set at Glastonbury Festival.
