Billie Eilish is a Grammy-winning singer and songwriter who has shot to fame with songs like ‘Idontwannabeyouanymore’ and ‘Bad Guy.’ Today, Eilish enjoys global popularity as being one of the most promising young talents in the music industry, but that was not always the case. This opens up the question: What did Billie Eilish do before she was famous?
Before Eilish achieved fame overnight with the release of her first song ‘Ocean Eyes’, she was a student and homeschooled by her parents. Being into music from a young age, she wrote her first songs together with her brother and sang in a choir, which ultimately led to her breakthrough success.
Read more about Billie Eilish’s childhood and adolescence, how she became famous almost overnight, and how much her life has changed since she has become a world-renowned pop star.
A Los Angeles Upbringing
Billie Eilish O’Connell was born in Los Angeles, California, on December 18, 2001.
She is the daughter of teacher, actress, and screenwriter Maggie Baird and construction worker Patrick O’Connell, who also was an actor and appeared in films like Iron Man.
Both of Eilish’s parents are amateur musicians and have encouraged Eilish and her older brother Finneas to express themselves via music, art and dancing when they were growing up.
In order to avoid binding their children to a strict educational curriculum and facilitate their own self-expression more easily, Eilish and her brother Finneas were homeschooled by their parents.
As a result, Finneas started producing and performing his own songs early on, which is why Eilish quickly got into music and songwriting herself.
This is why aged 11, Eilish wrote a song for her mother’s songwriting class. The song was about a zombie apocalypse and inspired Eilish to write more songs.
Eilish has said that at that time, she was inspired by and particularly listened to music by The Beatles, Green Day, Lana Del Rey and Justin Bieber.
Keen to involve herself further in music, Eilish joined the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus and performed at talent shows.
She also went on several acting auditions, which she disliked. She did however start successfully recording background dialogue for crowd scenes and worked on the films ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’, ‘Ramona and Beezus’, and the ‘X-Men’ series.
Eilish continued working on her own music together with her brother when she was a child and young teenager.
As a result, she developed her distinctive and catchy musical style, for which she is known today.
When she was 14, she ultimately recorded her brother’s song ‘Ocean Eyes’ with her brother’s help and uploaded it to Soundcloud, which catapulted her to fame and started the prodigious career she has today.
A Big Life Change
After ‘Ocean Eyes’ went viral, the life Eilish had up to that point changed drastically.
Eilish was quickly cast as one of the most promising young talents in the music industry and accumulated world-wide fame and a legion of loyal fans.
In 2018, Eilish released a chart-topping album called ‘When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’, for which she was awarded give Grammy Awards, which solidified her success in the music industry.
Additionally, in 2019 Times magazine placed her on their inaugural ‘Time 100 Next’ list.
Eilish is also the 23rd biggest artist of the digital singles era, according to RIAA, selling 37.5 million singles in the US alone.
This shows that Eilish went from being a normal child, who wrote and recorded music for fun with her brother, to being a Grammy-winning singer and songwriter in the span of just a few years. And with her unparalleled success, we can only wonder what will be next for Eilish.