.billieeilish appears on our latest cover. We catch the 17-year-old superstar at home and on the road as she opens up about adjusting to fame, writing songs with her brother Finneas, her mental-health struggles and more
“Yeah,” says Eilish, 17, stretching her reply into twoHer mom turns to me. “Can she clean her room while you talk? Is that OK?”
Eilish was born in December 2001, making her the first artist with a chart-topping album to be born this millennium. She’s so Gen Z, she makes twentysomethings feel ancient. She’s never bought a CD. She says things like, “I’m never gonna be 27 — that’s too old.” She’s also probably the only pop star who still sees a pediatrician.
Eilish’s fame has jumped exponentially this year, and she’s still figuring it all out. It’s a steep learning curve. A few weeks ago, she came down with multiple rashes, and a doctor said it was her body’s way of telling her she was exhausted and needed to rest. Recently, her family’s home address leaked online, and three fans showed up in a single day, including a creepy older guy who’d driven all the way from San Diego. For a while they had a bodyguard sleep in the living room.
, but in person, she’s funny, goofy, and entertainingly dramatic. She makes great faces, and even when she’s being bratty, it’s usually with a wink. Her hair, often blue, is today dyed a deep espresso, and her signature streetwear look — hoodie, basketball shorts, Air Jordans — is fashionably oversized and androgynous. Her fingers are spiked with silver rings , and her nails are tipped with frightening two-inch acrylics that look like dragon’s talons.
Maggie and Patrick were “mostly unemployed” actors who put their careers on hold to home-school the kids. They had no formal curriculum: Instead, they let Eilish and Finneas explore whatever interested them that day or week — art classes; museums; science programs at Cal Tech. “Our whole stance was, general knowledge is all,” Patrick says. “You need to know why the sky is blue, but you don’t need to memorize a bunch of esoterica you’ll never use.
If they were trying to create an incubator for musical prodigies, it worked. Finneas asked for his first drum kit for Christmas at age three and taught himself piano at 11. As for Eilish, she wrote her first song on the ukulele at four, was performing “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” at talent shows at seven, and joined the prestigious L.A. Children’s Chorus at eight.
Sibling Connection: Billie and Finneas in 2005. The siblings recorded all of Billie’s debut album in Finneas’ bedroom. Photograph courtesy of the O’Connell Family, sitting on the couch and gazing out the window while Maggie makes tea. “Can you get my notebook?” She was also self-conscious about her body. “At dance, you wear really tiny clothes,” she says. “And I’ve never felt comfortable in really tiny clothes. I was always worried about my appearance. That was the peak of my body dysmorphia. I couldn’t look in the mirror at all.”
Eventually, she got better. “I haven’t been depressed in a minute, which is great,” she says. “Seventeen has probably been the best year of my life. I’ve liked 17.” Eilish shifts into gear and makes her way through the neighborhood. “I’m trying so hard not to speed right now,” she says. I tell her not to drive differently on my account, and she shakes her head. “It’s mainly because my mom is up there.”
Live Wire: Eilish at Coachella in April. Gen X rock stars like Dave Grohl, Eddie Vedder, Billie Joe Armstrong, and Thom Yorke have been taking their kids to see Eilish perform and stopping by to say hello to the pop star. “Yorke was a little tough,” says her manager, Brian Marquis. “He was just as you’d expect: curmudgeonly, perturbed.” Marquis says Yorke told Eilish, “You’re the only one doing anything fucking interesting nowadays.
Eilish’s tour manager, Brian Marquis, is a vet of the hardcore scene who used to work production at Warped Tour. He says Eilish’s music reminds him of some bands he loved in the Nineties: Portishead, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails. For him, touring with Eilish is especially cool, because so many Gen X icons have kids who are just the right age to be Billie Eilish fans, and they’ve come backstage to say hi and be hero dads for a night: Dave Grohl, Billie Joe Armstrong, Thom Yorke.
As their careers slowed, they found other ways to make ends meet. Patrick worked as a handyman, Maggie taught classes in aerial , and both took on a lot of voice-over work. By 2007, they’d scraped together enough money to buy a house across the street, which they fixed up and flipped for a profit. But when they tried to flip another one, the market collapsed, and they lost everything, barely keeping their own house. “It was bad,” says Maggie. “It was a really tough time.
After the show, Eilish takes a few minutes to be alone and drink some water. She spends a while choosing her outfit for the next day, then does a smell test on some dressing-room candles. Eventually she retires to the bus, where she curls up on the bed with Patrick and debates which pictures from the salt flats to post to Instagram.
Eilish says it all came back to the tour. “I just couldn’t take the fact that I had to leave again,” Eilish says. “It felt like an endless limbo. Like there was no end in sight. And, I mean, it’sno end in sight with touring.” She has shows planned all over the world well into next year. “Thinking about that literally made me throw up,” she says. “I’m not a throw-upper, but I threw up twice, from the anxiety.
So Eilish went to see a therapist. And slowly, she felt better. Other things helped, too: She spent time with friends. She drove the Dragon. She rode Jackie O. “It’s funny,” she says, not laughing. “It was literally just a week — but it was so intense it feels like a whole year of my life I’m talking about right now. It was just a completely random week of bursting misery.”
In the end, Eilish knows how lucky she is. “I have an amazing job, dude. I really do. The things I get to do in my career have just been unbelievable. Like this shit, bro? Can you believe this is real?”
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