Billie Eilish is an American singer and songwriter who shot to fame with hit songs such as ‘Bad Guy’ and ‘Bury a Friend.’ While Eilish is known as being one of the most popular teen pop stars today, she has been writing music since she was a child. So what was Billie Eilish’s first song?
Aged 11, Billie Eilish wrote her first song about a zombie apocalypse for her mother’s songwriting class. Her first commercially successful song was Ocean Eyes: Eilish wrote and produced together with her brother Finneas and subsequently uploaded it to Soundcloud in 2015.
Read more about how Billie Eilish started writing songs as a child and how she quickly gained critical acclaim with her song ‘Ocean Eyes’ with the help of her brother Finneas.
A Young Songwriter
Billie Eilish O’Connell was born into an artistic family, with her mother being an actress and screenwriter and her father being an actor.
Both of her parents are amateur musicians, and have encouraged Billie and her older brother Finneas to express themselves via music, art and dancing when they were growing up.
Eilish and her brother Finneas were homeschooled and as Finneas started producing and performing his own songs early on, Eilish quickly got into music and songwriting herself.
This is why aged 11, she wrote a song for a songwriting class her mother was taking. The song was about a zombie apocalypse and was inspired by the television series ‘The Walking Dead’, from which Eilish took script lines and episode titles that she included in the song.
Eilish went on to write more songs during her early adolescence.
While none of them have been published, Eilish has said that for her early songs she took inspiration from the music she listened to at that time, which was 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.
Ocean Eyes
Eilish continued working on her distinctive music style, and so in October 2015, she was asked by her dance teacher to record a song for a dance routine.
As Finneas had previously written and produced the song ‘Ocean Eyes’, Eilish took the song and recorded it together with her brother’s help.
They ended up releasing it on the streaming platform ‘SoundCloud’, as they had already done with a few songs they had written earlier.
Ocean Eyes went viral on SoundCloud for its catchy and unique sound and ultimately kick-started Eilish’s astronomical musical career.
The song received praise and promotion from media outlets and followingly, in a deal arranged through Finneas and his own manager, Apple Music signed Eilish and gave her a record deal.
As a result, Eilish quickly released more songs like ‘Idontwannabeyouanymore’ and ‘Bored’, which she wrote for the Netflix series ‘13 Reasons Why.’
In 2018, Eilish released a chart-topping album called ‘When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’ She has since collaborated with her childhood idol Justin Bieber and recorded the theme song for the James Bond film ‘No Time To Die.’
Solidifying her success as a teen pop star, Eilish has received five Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, and two Guinness World Records.
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 Billie Eilish has experienced an unparalleled music career off the back of the very first song she released with her brother, Ocean Eyes.
And while it was that very song that turned her into the famous popstar she is today, the foundations for her music career were certainly laid when Eilish started writing songs as a child.