Billie Eilish opens with the struggles that come with stardom at such a young age. The 20-year-old was recently honored to feature on BBC’s 100 Women list, which features 100 inspiring and influential women around the world, and did an interview in which she discussed battling impostor syndrome and why growing up in the public eye was a “killer experience” .
The singer was just 14 when she and her brother/collaborator Finneas shared one of their first hits, “Ocean Eyes,” online. Since then, Eilish’s rise to fame has been meteoric. “When you see yourself and your name is everywhere, it’s really hard to know who you are,” she revealed to the BBC. “Like 15 [years old] It was when people decided that was who I was, so it’s really hard to change and grow and grow and become a human when people decided you were a thing.”
She continued, “It drives me absolutely crazy that you can search ‘Billie Eilish’ and the videos that pop up are things I said when I was 15. I’m like, almost nothing I have said before two months ago, I still believe. It feels like a trip.”
Eilish went on to say, “Growing up in the public eye is a very deadly experience…I just didn’t know what I was doing. I mean, I just had such severe impostor syndrome. I had this so many times in my life, and really just, like, parts of last year and the year before are like, whew I was just in this downward spiral of impostor syndrome and I was grabbing everything I could to feel like myself again, but I didn’t know.”