Billie Eilish, 21, still struggles with fame and sometimes has ‘impending-doom feelings’ – but a message she received in Paris has helped her cope
Billie Eilish looks back on her success.
The 21-year-old crooner told the Best Of Beauty issue from Allure that she still struggles with her enormous fame.
‘I’m getting better and better, but to be honest I’m not doing very well. For a while. I have feelings of impending doom most of the day,” said the hit star in the Barbie blockbuster.
“If I think about it too much, that I can never have privacy again, that’s enough to make you do all kinds of crazy things. But you have to let it go.’
One of her focuses is control and learning to let go a little.
Three times as much fun: Billie Eilish looks back on her success. The 21-year-old crooner said in Allure’s Best Of Beauty Issue that she still struggles with her enormous fame
Up close: ‘I’m getting better and better, but to be honest I’m not doing very well. For a while. I have feelings of impending doom most of the day,” said the star who has sung songs for a James Bond film and more recently the Barbie blockbuster
“There was a moment when I was in Paris, we were driving around and I was in a bad place. It wasn’t a good time for Bill. I wasn’t getting better and didn’t know when I would.
“And this motorcycle pulled up next to the car, and on this guy’s helmet there was a sticker that said, ‘Continue.’ I sat there and thought, oh. Message received.
“I have a really big problem with control, so I’ve taught myself that there are things you can’t control and you have to move on. I have often settled for things, people and life. I settled for less than I deserved, and I’m not going to do that again.”
As a teenager she felt more at ease: ‘When I was seventeen, I thought: I found it. I have found the person I am, forever. This is how I’m going to do it. I’ve found all the ways!’ she told writer Arabelle Sicardi.
‘These are my limits. These are the things that make me happy, and this is my recipe for how I’m going to make music and be happy.”
But things changed.
“Then I grew up a little bit and suddenly life was like, this isn’t going to work. You have to change. You’re not that person anymore.’
In red: ‘If I think about it too much, that I can never have privacy again, that’s enough to make you do all kinds of crazy things. But you have to let it go,” she said
Red-y for more: One of her issues is control and learning to let go a little
On her advice to fellow artists and women: “But the thing is, people need to know – women need to know – that you don’t have to be exceptional. You can just be a person, and you should get awards for just being that.
“Sometimes artists don’t have plans, and that’s fine, but I do, and I wasn’t going to waste them.”
About co-writing ‘What was I made for?’ with her brother and collaborator Finneas O’Connell for the Barbie soundtrack: ‘We wrote it at a time when we couldn’t have been less inspired or less creative. That day we were making stuff and said, ‘We lost it. Why are we even doing this?’
“And then came those first chords, and ‘I used to float / now I’m just falling down,’ and the song wrote itself.”
“I have the whole video of us writing the song, and the first thing we wrote were the lines in the first ten minutes. We wrote most of the song without thinking about ourselves and our own lives, but thinking about this character inspired us.
‘A few days went by and I realized it was about me. It’s all I feel. And that doesn’t just apply to me; Ultimately, everyone feels that way.’
Her moody shoot was by photographer Cho Gi-Seok.
Allure’s first Best of Beauty: The Live Event on October 21 at Chelsea Industrial in New York, see here. The special print edition of Best of Beauty will be available during Best of Beauty: The Live Event.