Billie Eilish accepts the GRAMMY for Song of the Year with her brother Finneas O’connell for Bad Guy at the 2020 GRAMMY Awards in Los Angeles, CA.
Watch Billie Eilish’s speech for Best New Artist at the 62nd GRAMMY Awards.
Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell (born December 18, 2001) is an American singer and songwriter. Born and raised in Highland Park, Los Angeles, Eilish began singing at a young age. She gained media attention in 2016 with the release of “Ocean Eyes, originally on SoundCloud and subsequently released by Darkroom on Interscope Records. “Ocean Eyes” was written and produced by her brother Finneas, with whom she collaborates on music and live shows. Eilish’s debut EP, Don’t Smile at Me (2017), reached the top 15 in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
Her debut studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019), debuted atop the Billboard 200 and became the best-performing album of 2019 in the U.S., also reaching number one in the UK. The album contains six Billboard Hot 100 top 40 singles: “When the Party’s Over”, “Bury a Friend”, “Wish You Were Gay”, “Xanny”, “Everything I Wanted”, and “Bad Guy”, the last of which became her first number-one single in the US.
Eilish has 13 platinum and four gold singles in the US as of January 2020. Her accolades include five Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, two Guinness World Records, and three MTV Video Music Awards. She is the youngest person and first female to win the four main Grammy categories, Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist in the same year.
O’Connell was born on December 18, 2001, in Los Angeles, California, and raised in Los Angeles’ Highland Park. Her parents are actress and screenwriter Maggie Baird and actor Patrick O’Connell, both of whom are also musicians. O’Connell is of Irish and Scottish descent. Eilish was homeschooled and her mother taught her and her brother Finneas O’Connell basics of songwriting. Eilish began singing at a young age and wrote her first song at age four, while her brother had been writing, performing and producing his own songs with his band. Eilish’s parents encouraged her and her brother to express themselves and explore whatever they wanted, including art classes and acting. Eilish had gone on some acting auditions, which she disliked. She enjoyed, however, recording background dialogue for crowd scenes, and worked in the films Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Ramona and Beezus and X-Men. Eilish performed at talent shows and joined the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus at age eight.
In October 2015, Eilish recorded the song “Ocean Eyes”, written and produced by Finneas originally for his band, after her dance teacher asked them to write a song for a choreography. They released the song on SoundCloud, garnering praise from various websites. Finneas’s manager had reached out to him in November 2015 to talk about Eilish’s potential. Finneas then helped Eilish sign to the A&R company Platoon, which helps package artists before they get a major label deal. Eilish then got a publicist, who connected her to the fashion company Chanel, and a stylist, both of whom helped shape her image. A music video for “Ocean Eyes” was released in March 2016. By August 2016, Eilish had signed to the record label and artist management company The Darkroom, an imprint of Interscope Records. Justin Lubliner, who signed Eilish to The Darkroom, developed her rollout as an artist, taking inspiration from the model of hip hop artists such as Travis Scott and Chance the Rapper, not relying on one big single and focusing on creating a “persona and distinct aesthetic”. A video of Eilish performing a dance to “Ocean Eyes” was released in November 2016, and the song was re-released worldwide through Darkroom and Interscope. That year, Eilish also released the single “Six Feet Under”. “Ocean Eyes” was certified platinum by the RIAA in September 2018 and peaked at number 84 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 2019.
On January 14, 2017, Eilish released an EP with four remixes of “Ocean Eyes”. Following the success of the “Ocean Eyes” remixes, Eilish released the single “Bellyache” on February 24, 2017, with a video released in March 2017. That month, Eilish released the track “Bored” as part of the soundtrack to the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. In June 2017, Eilish released the single “Watch” with a follow-up single, “Copycat” released in July 2017, along with the announcement of her debut extended play, Don’t Smile at Me. Each Friday in July, another single to the EP was added. These singles included “Idontwannabeyouanymore” and “My Boy”, both of which were certified gold by the RIAA. Don’t Smile at Me was released in August 2017. The EP transformed Eilish “from pastel pop star to dark pop artist.”
Eilish’s team worked with Spotify, which promoted her on its most popular playlist, “Today’s Top Hits”. The Baffler described Eilish’s sound as fitting into the “streambait” genre comprised of largely “mid-tempo, melancholy pop” influenced by Lana del Rey, whose “singing style, bleakness, and the hip-hop influenced production” shaped the aesthetic. Eilish’s commercial success expanded with her Spotify promotion. After the release of Don’t Smile at Me, Eilish collaborated with American rapper Vince Staples for a remix of “Watch” titled “&Burn”, which was later included on a re-release of the EP. Following the EP’s commercial success, Apple Music named Eilish an Up Next artist in September 2017. A live EP was released, titled “Up Next Session: Billie Eilish”.
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