Timeline: the 10 most crucial moments of Billie Eilish’s career so far
Billie Eilish burst onto the scene in 2016 with ‘Ocean Eyes’, a song which found overnight success on Soundcloud. In the past six years, Eilish has risen to become one of pop music’s most successful artists, championing a unique style that separates her from her contemporaries. By blending her airy, soft vocals with distorted trap beats, electronics and art pop instrumentals, Eilish has captivated listeners across the globe.
Since 2019, Eilish has released two studio albums, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and Happier Than Ever, alongside two EPs, Don’t Smile At Me and Guitar Songs. According to the RIAA, the singer has sold 41.5 million digital singles and five million albums, and as of 2021, she has accumulated over 76.7 billion streams worldwide.
Eilish has cited many influences over her sound, from Lana Del Rey to Childish Gambino to Nicki Minaj. The musician has also declared hip hop her favourite genre, although she was inspired to pursue a musical career after stumbling upon Aurora’s ‘Runaway’ on YouTube. She has also been greatly inspired by Blur and Gorillaz’s Damon Albarn, who she credited with changing how she views music creation and art.
There is no doubt that Eilish is a star; in 2021, she even featured in a documentary about her impressive rise to fame – Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry. Therefore, we have created a handy timeline chronicling the most crucial moments of the singer’s career thus far…
Tracing Billie Eilish’s career so far:
Childhood
The singer was born on December 18th 2001, with the impressive name Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell, to actor parents Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Connell. Raised in the Highland Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles, Eilish and her brother, Finneas, were homeschooled to allow them greater creative freedom. Eilish learned to write songs during this time and began playing the ukulele when she was six. At age 11, she wrote her first proper song, inspired by a Walking Dead-style zombie apocalypse.
As a child, Eilish attended several acting auditions, which led her to contribute to background crowd scene dialogue for films such as Diary of A Wimpy Kid. She also was an avid dancer, although a growth plate injury terminated any hopes of a dance career in 2016
Viral Success of ‘Ocean Eyes’ on Soundcloud
At just 13 years old, Eilish and her older brother Finneas, who had been creating music in bands for several years, began making music together. Their first songs were ‘She’s Broken’ and ‘Fingers Crossed’, with Eilish recalling: “We recorded them and put them out on SoundCloud, just for fun.” However, in November of that year, Eilish released ‘Ocean Eyes’ on the music streaming platform, written, mixed, and produced by Finneas.
The track was initially intended for his band, but he quickly realised that Eilish’s voice would be much better suited. Furthermore, when Eilish’s dance teacher heard the song, he asked if he could have a copy to choreograph a dance to. After the track was uploaded to Soundcloud for Eilish’s teacher to access, it exploded overnight, with Finneas telling NME: “It gave us something from nothing, which is so unbelievable.”
Signing and Don’t Smile At Me EP
When Finneas’ manager Danny Rukasin heard the track, he knew Eilish had the potential to become a star. At the start of 2016, Eilish’s brother and manager arranged for the singer to be signed to Apple Music’s Platoon, which specialised in helping emerging artists before getting signed to a major label. With a publicist and a stylist, Eilish’s star image was set and ready, and a music video for ‘Ocean Eyes’ was released. Subsequently, the song was played on popular radio stations, and Eilish was signed to Darkroom and Interscope Records.
After a string of singles, Eilish released her debut EP, Don’t Smile at Me, in 2017. It contained eight tracks, including ‘Ocean Eyes’ and reached number 12 on the UK Album Charts. A few months after its release, Eilish reissued the EP, which included a collaboration with Vince Staples.
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
Eilish teased her debut album with the single ‘You Should See Me in a Crown’ in the summer of 2018. After a few more singles, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was released to critical acclaim in March 2019. Defined as an art pop record, the LP also took inspiration from hip-hop, trap and industrial music. Thematically, Eilish was influenced by night terrors and lucid dreaming, which is reflected in the rather creepy album artwork.
Within three months of release, the album sold over 1.3 million copies in the US alone, and Eilish became the youngest female solo act in the UK to top the charts. Eilish took home multiple accolades at the Grammy Awards for the album, including Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album.
The ‘Bad Guy’ viral meme
Album single ‘Bad Guy’ became a massive hit upon its release and is now certified six times platinum in the US. Discussing the meaning behind the song, Eilish told 102.7KISSFM, “The initial idea for the song is like people that have to tell everybody that they are a certain way all the time. They’re not that certain way. In general, I feel like you will never catch a bad bitch telling everyone she’s a bad bitch. It’s on – it’s you.” In July 2019, Eilish was joined by one of her childhood heroes, Justin Beiber, who added rap-inspired vocals to the track.
Due to the song’s structure, which features Eilish declaring, “I’m the bad guy… duh!” before a synthesiser riff dominates the hook, the internet found it the perfect meme template. Many users incorporated clips of The Simpsons, replacing Eilish’s “duh” with Homer Simpson’s “D’oh!” Soon the song was being remixed, parodied and ‘meme-ified’ at rapid speed, yet this only aided its popularity.
2020 Grammy Award success
Who could forget Billie’s sweep of the 2020 Grammy’s (or the iconic picture of her clutching all her awards à la Adele in 2012)? Billie won five out of the six awards she was nominated for, including the most coveted four awards of Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year.
At only eighteen years old, she usurped Taylor Swift as the youngest-ever solo winner of Album of The Year. Joined onstage by her brother and long-time collaborator Finneas O’Connell, the pair dedicated the Song Of The Year Award to “all the kids who are making music in their bedroom today”, a nod to their humble Soundcloud production roots.
James Bond theme song
Following in the footsteps of Adele, Paul McCartney, and Jack White, who have each written tracks for Bond films – Billie turned her melodic, hushed tones to James Bond theme ‘No Time To Die’. In a statement to Variety, she said: “It feels crazy to be a part of this in every way. To be able to score the theme song to a film that is part of such a legendary series is a huge honour. James Bond is the coolest film franchise ever to exist. I’m still in shock.”
With assistance from Hans Zimmer, Johnny Marr and, of course, co-writer Finneas, the song draws more on her emotionally charged ballads than her upbeat dance tracks, the result being a slick, soulful piece that Daniel Craig said was “fucking amazing”. Furthermore, the song even earned Eilish an Oscar for Best Original Song.
The World’s a Little Blurry documentary
Billie Eilish: The Worlds A Little Blurry was a year-in-the-life documentary that followed Eilish as she navigates her explosive rise in popularity – Invisalign and all. R.J. Cutler’s exploration of both her family and fame made for a fascinating watch because it began right in Eilish’s childhood home, where she’s in the thick of recording her debut album.
As the production of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? gets underway, her life seems simultaneously chaotic, exciting, and at times shockingly lonely. An intimate and revealing look at the teenager turned pop sensation, the docu-film has earned four Emmy nominations, including awards for Music Direction, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Picture Editing.
Success of Happier Than Ever
Happier Than Ever was the monumental second studio album Eilish delivered, shedding her garish green hair and upbeat tempo for a more down-turned, refined pop record. Talking to NPR, Eilish said that for this album, co-written with Finneas O’Connell, she “wanted the theme of old Hollywood and beautiful and classy”.
Tweaking her aesthetic and sonic pace was inspired by the solitude and reflection provided by the Covid-19 pandemic, to which fans and critics alike responded overwhelmingly with praise. The video to ‘Happier Than
Ever’, which sees Eilish frantically escape a flooded house, has amassed 5.6 million likes, as well as winning Eilish an MTV Video Music Award for Song of the Year at the 2022 ceremony.
Glastonbury
At just 20, Eilish made history as the youngest-ever solo headliner to play Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, only three years after making her Worthy Farm debut on the Other Stage. After months of intensive touring worldwide where she’d been performing songs from her second album, Happier Than Ever, Eilish was like a well oiled machine.
Dancing with her typical frenetic energy, and belting out hits like ‘Oxytocin’, ‘Ocean Eyes’ and ‘bad guy’, she was able to convert some of the more casual crowd attending to the virtues of a good Gen Z pop performance. Beyond putting on a good show, Eilish had comfortably stepped up to the plate as a headliner whilst demonstrating that there’s room to showcase younger talent at festival’s top spots.
