The ‘Bad Guy’ hit singer Billie Eilish has skyrocketed to stardom during her younger years, seemingly out of nowhere, topping charts around the world and performing live and in her albums to millions of adoring fans. However, many people are wondering where the singer came from, what school she went to, and how it all began.
Billie Eilish was actually homeschooled by her parents Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Connell. She was homeschooled with her brother Finneas, which is where she learned the art of songwriting that has made her so successful today.
To find out more about what Billie’s homeschooling experience was like, how she learned about music, and how she got to be where she is today, let’s deep dive into her history below.
The Birth of a Star
Billie Eilish started her life like any other normal girl. Born Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell, Billie was born on the 18th December 2001, in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were Maggie Baird, an actress, teacher, and screenwriter, and Patrick O’Connell, who was a construction worker.
Interestingly, Billie was also conceived by in vitro fertilization treatments.
In their free time, Eilish’s parents were also into amateur entertainment. They both were amateur musicians, and her father would work as a part-time actor and even featured in blockbuster movies such as Iron Man.
Once Billie was born, she was homeschooled, alongside her brother Finneas, from a young age, never attending a traditional school. It was during these homeschooling lessons where Billie and her brother were taught the basics of songwriting.
These lessons sparked a passion for music in both Billie and Finneas. Finneas started early by writing and producing his own music and later formed a band.
It’s clear that creativity was highly encouraged throughout the family. Billie has spoken many times about how her parents encouraged expression in any form, whether it was expressing how they feel or exploring whatever ideas they had in any way they wanted. Some of the expression activities included making art, singing, and dancing.
At the age of 11, Billie had finished writing her first ‘real’ song, which happened to be about the zombie apocalypse, for which she was inspired by watching the TV smash series The Walking Dead. She even
borrowed script dialogue and title names for the lyrics.
Even at such a young age, Billie was already working on big projects. She tried out in a couple of singing auditions, but she stated how she disliked the process of auditions.
Instead, she focused on working on entertainment projects, such as recording the background chatter that was to be used in major productions. Some hit productions she scored for include the X-Men series, Diaries of a Wimpy Kid, and many more.
It wasn’t until she was 13 she started to take the world by storm.
The Start of Something New
In 2015, at the age of 13, Billie started to seriously work on making music with her brother, Finneas. By this point, Finneas had continued to work for many years on making music, both writing and performing, with his band. The siblings decided to write and record their own songs together, which they titled She’s Broken and Finger’s Crossed.
If you have yet to hear her original song, here it is in lyric form, and it’s safe to say that even back in the day, Billie was producing beautiful music.
In an interview with Variety magazine, Billie stated how she wrote and recorded the music ‘just for fun,’ after putting them on SoundCloud, and they were widely well-received.
Fast forward several months, Billie released another song titled ‘Ocean Eyes,’ which was once again written and produced by Finneas. He had originally written the song for his band but decided that Billie’s vocal style would suit the song far better.
They wrote the song and uploaded it to SoundCloud, so Billie’s dance teacher could download it and create some choreography for it to be used in Billie’s dance lessons. The song received over 400,00 listens in just two weeks.
Due to this soar in popularity, Finneas spoke with his band manager, Danny Rukasin, to help Billie find her place in the music industry. In 2016, Billie was able to secure a contract with Apple Music, who introduced her to a publicist and received contracts with Chanel, the luxury image brand, who helped her shape her iconic teen image.
And from here, the rest of Billie’s history is, well, history.
With the help of her family, such as her mother homemaking Billie’s early music videos, her brother, and her team that did things like helping Billie’s music get featured on Spotify’s huge Today’s Top Hits playlist, Billie soared to stardom and into the public eye in a way she had perhaps only ever imagined.
So Many Achievements In Such Little Time
There’s no denying that Billie’s rise to fame has been unparalleled by any other artist in modern times, perhaps not since the explosion of Justin Bieber.
In just a few short years, Billie’s music has won Grammy Awards, MTV European Music Awards, American Music Awards, has achieved two Guinness World Records, a Brit Award, three Billboard Music Awards, and many more.
She has also performed on stages around the world to hundreds of thousands of adoring fans and has become the youngest, second person, and the first female ever to win four of the main Grammy Award categories in the same year.
That’s a truly mind-blowing feat, and kudos to Billie for making her dreams come true. Billie’s story is an inspirational one, and it’s beautiful to see that all her family’s hard work and belief in her has paid off as much as it has.