On an incredibly cold October Saturday in Texas, Billie Eilish proves to a sold out crowd at the Austin City Limits festival how rock you can rock with a surgical boot. The 17-year-old woman has been playing with two sprained ankles for weeks, barely slowing down after injuring one by falling down the stairs just before her concert at the Greek Theater in Hollywood, and the other months later in a distracted moment while jumping on stage in Milan. Now she leaps across the planks as she launches into her hit tube “Bad Guy”, her barely audible song over the slightly flat sound of thousands of young voices, mostly women, singing.
Most artists would keep their most famous song for the end, maybe even a reminder. But nothing about Eilish is in the book.
Unlike most contemporary pop dishes, his songs often venture into dark lyrical territory, with titles like “Enter a Friend”, “Wish You Were Gay”, “Six Feet Under” and “Bitches Broken Hearts”. Eilish’s first video for “Ocean Eyes” shows his smudged makeup on his face; a later clip, for “When the party is over”, has black liquid running from her eyes like tears; for “All good girls go to hell”, it is a winged reptile which emerges from an oily swamp while explosions explode around it. The visuals at his shows are animated, nightmarish and Tim Burton-esque, featuring cemeteries, scary dolls and sinister silhouettes in the dark forests. She performs “Bury a friend” from a levitating bed, channeling Linda Blair for a moment and Samara from “The Ring” the next. Ariana Grande, she is not.
Asked about the secret of her call, Eilish replied, “I have no idea, man,” with a smile and a shrug. “I didn’t know I was saying and touching aspects of life that were deeper than the average song. I didn’t try to do that – I just did, “she says. Variety. “At the beginning, one of the only things I heard was that the music was too dark, too sad, too depressing, that it was not happy enough. There was this period when everything I heard was “Smile! Talk about how much you love yourself!” – and I was literally at a time when I didn’t love myself. Now I can, but then I was a little 14 years old. I knew nothing about self-esteem or self-care. All I knew was what I knew, and a lot was bad and negative. This is what I wanted to write, and this is why people refer to it. I mean, even the Beatles have songs that are like, “I’m miserable!“
Today, Eilish is a massive crossover success, having pretty much relaunched the alternative format while folding the Top 40 radio to the left, based on a vision that it oversees from concept to execution. During a rehearsal for an “Austin City Limits” television appearance earlier in the week, Eilish inquires about the stage lights that go out after each song. Assured that it will be absolutely black, as she wishes, Eilish replies: “Great! Love this! Now are we all right here? Because I want to leave. “
See exclusive outtakes from the Variety Billie Eilish cover shoot HERE
The scene would not be so striking if the artist who called the shots was not a tiny teenager with fluorescent green hair. But make no mistake, Billie Eilish is a boss, the epicenter of an accidental family business that has become an industry in its own right as she quickly became the revolutionary artist of the year. Like most big stars, she is surrounded by a group of people at almost all times, a Navy SEALs-ish swarm that ranges from three to a dozen and moves as a single organism around it – management, security, publicists , creative directors, physiotherapists and a seemingly ubiquitous film crew (working on a documentary that should land on Apple TV Plus), taking her from the bus to the hotel and back and forth. (It can make comic scenes – before going on stage at the festival, a cloud of eight people followed Eilish on the 30 feet from his dressing trailer to the bathroom trailer.) Her 22-year-old brother Finneas O’Connell, is its co-author, group companion and main collaborator and musical producer; his parents, Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Connell, both former actors, are salaried members of the crew, serving as personal assistant / public awareness and public service coordinator, respectively. But everyone in the swarm treats her like the boss, which clearly suits her.
(Go here for our long interview with Eilish and Finneas about their music, their songwriting process, their influences and what’s to come.)
“Yes, I love it,” says Eilish in a rare window when she isn’t playing, meeting, signing merchandise, checking the sound or recording a new song with Finneas. “With my groups of friends and the things I have done, I have always been the manager, the alpha. I always wanted to make my own sh – to be my own person – not to control people, but to control what I do. “
When asked when his daughter’s assertiveness first appeared, Patrick said: “Looking back, you could see it in the 3 year old – she always been “authoritarian pants”, “he laughs, referring to an old family term. “Some kids are funny or smart or walk early, and from the start, Billie was very Billie, with a lot of imagination and good [artistic] eye. She made these little films with her little animals and her friends, and before Billie eilish, she was saving and dressing madly: “Oh, that garbage bag will look great!”
“She has very strong ideas about what she wants artistically,” he continues. “She may be completely clueless about other things, but oh, my God, does she want the lights, the music and her clothes in a certain way.” Her brand outfit: oversized sneakers and t-shirts and sneakers, although creative and / or personalized.
“We take the lead and give it control,” said John Janick, president and chief executive officer of Interscope Geffen A&M. “I want artists with a vision, who know what they want, and she was 14 years old. He is an old soul with a unique and strong point of view, and he is like a Mack truck, voluntary and unstoppable. She is the CEO of Billie Eilish. “
See exclusive outtakes from the Variety Billie Eilish cover shoot HERE
Born Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell and raised in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, the young artist has accumulated platinum certifications over the past two years for her first EP, “Don’t Smile at Me”, and several singles; his double platinum album “When we all fall asleep, where do we go?” easily climbed to No. 1 in 17 countries when it was released in March. She won two American Music Awards last month, including the best new artist, and is up for six Grammys. “Bad Guy” has been broadcast almost a billion times on Spotify; three of his other songs have passed the half-billion mark. And at a time when hit records regularly have half a dozen writers and / or producers, Eilish writes and records almost all of his material with Finneas, who recently released a solo EP, collaborated on songs with Camila Cabello and Selena Gomez, and is actively pursued by several major labels.
His touring business is even stronger. She has led some of the world’s biggest festivals – including groundbreaking performances at Coachella and the Glastonbury Fest in England in the spring – and her recent 2020 Arena World Tour immediately sold out her North American dates and most of the others territories, moving more than half a million tickets in the first hour. A huge percentage of the audience during its shows carries its official merchandise, much of which it has designed, from clothing revenues that it can count alongside support agreements with Calvin Klein, Nike Air Jordan and others.
Ask the people around her why she hit so big, and the default adjectives are that she is “real” and “authentic” and “unique”. But Justin Lubliner, director of Darkroom, the label in partnership with Interscope to which it is signed, poses a well articulated theory: “She is your best friend in high school or college”, he says. “It represents something that people want for themselves: express and connect, say and do what they want. His intelligence and the sophistication of his songs connect to adults and remind them of their favorite artists, and young people connect to his independence. “
Eilish’s rise is the result of a deliberate and strategic three-year process that brought a 13-year-old student to school where she is today. She readily admits that she was baffled by the demands of being groomed for stardom. “I was not prepared for it,” she says. “I just liked music, and I didn’t know I had to have a whole …” She shows the accoutrements of the tours around her. “It was a really weird thing to put myself on when I was 15 years old.”
Her team – usually including her family, managers Danny Rukasin and Brandon Goodman, daily manager Laura Ramsay, Lubliner, publicist Alexandra Baker and several executives from Interscope – gathered around her in the months that followed His revolutionary song “Ocean Eyes” was first published on SoundCloud in late 2015, and has always sought to strike an elusive balance between keeping star-maker machines and keeping a teenager healthy.
See exclusive outtakes from the Variety Billie Eilish cover shoot HERE
“The resulting gifts are great, even if the price is quite high,” says his mother. “But Billie has a great team and good managers, and I and Patrick say,” It’s too much! “When it does. Something that has come in handy has told her,” The reason we do this is because you said you wanted it, “and I think that helped her get there.” to face. “
At the same time, from the start, she showed a talent far beyond her years. “Even when she was 13, it was very clear that Billie was not only a great singer but that she had a strong sense of images and social media,” recalls Rukasin. “She only had 10 posts on Instagram, but they were all cool. And depending on the speed at which “Ocean Eyes” was growing, it was clear that they were going to need a team. “
Thus began a long and careful rhythm of song releases, streaming services and constant tours, largely international, which culminated with the release of his album “When we fall asleep”. The gain was much greater than expected, and even if it came at a cost, Eilish insists that things are much better now. “I worked very hard for a long time, and I got to where I no longer have to work as hard,” she says. “I don’t even have to say how bad it was because I’m so happy now – it’s actually great and I like shit, and I just want it to get bigger. “
Eilish repeats this feeling by sitting down with Finneas for a video interview after recording their TV performance “Austin City Limits”. “The celebrity was brutal,” she says. “People forget that I was literally a child and I still am. I was overworked and I’m glad I was, because it really pays off now. “Then she starts talking about how things got better before she and her brother collapsed in an age-appropriate laughing fit – the cause of which is unclear, like many seizures laughing brother or sister – who scuttled several minutes of the interview.
However, Eilish expresses an apparent ambivalence about celebrity in his latest single, “All I Wanted”, where she sings in a close whisper, “I had a dream: I have everything I wanted / Not what you think, and if I’m being honest / It could have been a nightmare.… Because everyone wants something from me now / And I don’t want to let them down. “
See exclusive outtakes from the Variety Billie Eilish cover shoot HERE
A staple of any Eilish concert is the flock of wide-eyed fans, many accompanied by parents, who line up for VIP meetings every night. Many come with elaborate gifts, each of which is carefully collected by Baird; many have homemade Eilish-themed T-shirts; some even have tattoos. Each fan gets about a minute with it, which usually consists of a big hug, a photo, and a brief conversation that Eilish often conducts with compliments on a gift or on the style of “Your shirt / hat / nails / shoes is / are fire!, “and ends with posts like” Be good to yourself! “Many let them cry.
“I sometimes forget that they are not literally my friends,” she said of her fans. “It’s weird, like, it’s probably the biggest jerk of it all: that the people I’ve never met think I’m really close friends with them. And then they forget that I’m not not, and sometimes say things at meetings and greet or post things that are joking or sarcastic about my bad appearance [a certain] photo, and I’m like, wow, this is so mean. But then I remember it’s part of being friends – you joke about your friends, and they make fun of you in return – so it’s all love, and I really, really don’t want that exchange. “
Stopping to play with lace on his Gucci kicks, which are dazzled by green jewels that emit reflections throughout the room, Eilish continues: “But also, I must be careful. If I say something in return, there would be articles on me being mean, and also, I know from experience that when [you meet] someone you’ve watched all your life, even a joke can really spoil you. “
A psychologist doesn’t have to theorize that Eilish’s relationship with his fans somehow replaces the teenage friendships that most kids live in school, which his family and team always have watched. Sometimes, in the past two years, one of Eilish’s friends accompanied the tour for a few weeks at a time, so she had a non-family companion, an adult, or a fan. But Baird says that over time, the team has largely become a family. “Bringing a friend over for a few tours really helped, I think,” says Baird. “But most people her age are in high school, and she thought they didn’t have much in common. But somewhere over there, she crossed over: she’s friends with the crew and [her team] now. If she could, Billie would take the whole team on a giant bus. Before Eilish’s headlining concert at the 18,000-seat Toyota Center in Houston, most of the touring team got together for a huge vegan backstage dinner; she sat down with the crew.
And sometimes there are really normal moments with the fans. “There is this group of girls I have met a few times and they are cool as hell,” says Eilish. “They followed me to my hotel – which I hate, Please don’t come to my hotel – but i realized it was them and we just hung out alone in the parking lot at 3 am. We talked and laughed and joked and played a ninja game – it’s that game where you stand in a circle and try to get out of each other by hitting your hand. But we come hang outand I was just friends with them. And even other kids, wearing merch with my name on it, who come to my show – they’re like friends. I really feel like seeing my friends again. “
See exclusive outtakes from the Variety Billie Eilish cover shoot HERE
As fans move on, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more bizarre trifecta of Billie Eilish admirers on the sidelines during his ACL festival which takes place a few hours later: Guns N ‘Roses’ Axl Rose, The Cure’s Robert Smith and Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons admiring the spectacle in all its splendor. As usual in most of his concerts, Eilish walks in the crowd towards the end of his set – sprained ankles are damned – but this time, the results are unusually unpleasant.
“Today was probably the worst it has ever been,” she said later that evening in her hotel suite, about 20 stories above downtown Austin. “I felt attacked, in a way. It sounds weird to say, because if you [go into the crowd] you’re going to have this reaction, and that’s perfectly fine and I expect it. But today, jeez, someone strangled me, and they pulled my arms so hard that security literally pulled me. People were pulling my hair; someone stole my ring; they grabbed my chest and parts of me that, like, I don’t need people to grab! Of course, they are just excited. I get it. But I still have to live with it, you know?
While the presence of the family and the team releases the pressure, they all feel it. “I wouldn’t say it puts pressure on the family but on all of us individually, although now there is the team to help deal with everything,” said Patrick O’Connell. “Oh, there are arguments, of course, but I think that in any good relationship, there is fighting, if it is constructive. Family is something from which I draw my strength, and I think that we let’s all do. “
Even Finneas, who has worked the eyeball with his sister for most of the past few years, minimizes any tension. “I think most brothers and sisters [fight], but I would say that our evolution is that we chat with passion, and because we are brothers and sisters, we are not filtered about it. But we are both so fond of each other that I don’t know if I really have the ability or the power to hurt my sister’s feelings. “
Everyone agrees that, in general, these are good problems. “Without speaking for her,” says O’Connell, “I think she wanted to be seen and heard and what she was doing for us, like all of us. Now did she want to lose all her teenage freedom and not be able to go to the mall? No, but she wanted to be emblematic. “
Billie Eilish photographed at Willis Wonderland by Allee Willis
