THE WILD CHILD OF POP

Billie Eilish’s music perfectly captures the existential angst and anxieties of her generation

- ANJULY MATHAI

For pop star Billie Eilish, the best thing about turning 18 last December was that she would get to drive her car—a matte black Dodge Challenger—past 11pm. “All I have ever wanted to do was drive,” she gushed in an interview with TV host Jimmy Kimmel in November. Getting to drive her own car seems like the clichéd desire of every teenager in the Hollywood high school dramas of the noughties. In many ways, Eilish fits the role perfectly. She peppers her speech with words like ‘dope’, ‘trash’ and ‘badass’, asks her mother to sleep with her when she has nightmares, and hates cleaning her room.

But in other ways, Eilish is far from your typical teenager. At 18, she became the youngest singer and the first woman to win the Grammy’s big four awards—for record of the year, song of the year, album of the year and the best new artist. She rose to fame at the age of 13 with her song Ocean Eyes, written by her brother Finneas O’Connell. The song, which was uploaded on SoundCloud, went viral, spawning many remixes and catapulting her to pop superstardom overnight. Her first album—When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?—debuted at number one on the Billboard charts last year.