“I feel sad when she’s sad. I feel happy when she’s happy. I feel angry when she’s angry,” writes one of Billie Eilish’s fans, 13-year-old Amelia, on Instagram.
Eilish’s fans, I’ve learned, are intense. I don’t mean that as a slight; as far as I can tell, the American pop star’s largely teenage, largely female fan base is packed with young people who are smart, driven and – above all else – emotionally intelligent beyond their years. A lot like Eilish herself, who at 17 released her debut album in March, , which reached number one in the UK, Canada and Australia.
What do Billie Eilish’s Gen Z fans love about her?
To find out what’s driving her wild success, I’ve been messaging some of the singer-songwriter and sometime model’s fans on Instagram. UK-based Amelia’s Billie Eilish fan Instagram account (@_bellyachebillie_) has over four thousand followers. The account, like many others of its genre – some with over 150,000 followers – consists of pictures and videos of Eilish, with heart emoji-punctuated captions like, “I just wanna hug her and I just wanna tell her how much I love her.”
“Billie’s songs often tell stories or express feelings I had a hard time figuring out,” writes Saima, a 13-year-old Danish fan, who says Eilish’s music helped her through a rough patch. This emotional connection is a common thread among all the fans I message, who – although based everywhere from Belgium to Australia – are all female and all aged 13 to 17.
“Her lyrics are so raw and honest, and help me through the good and the bad times,” writes 15-year-old Joelie from Australia. “They serve as a warm hug and have taught me to not care about what others think and to instead be my own person.” Eilish combines the more established themes of unrequited love and breakups with far darker ones like death, depression and anxiety.
Who are Billie Eilish’s celebrity fans?
And it’s not just scores of teenagers who are mesmerised by the LA native – top-charting musicians and big-name fashion houses alike are falling over themselves to work with Eilish. Justin Bieber and fellow wunderkind, Khalid, have both been collaborators; Tyler, The Creator hopes to be next. Her signature baggy, figure-obscuring clothes have garnered the attention of Chanel and Calvin Klein, the latter running an ad campaign focused exclusively on her.
How has Billie Eilish curated her style, sound and music videos?
Eilish’s music is rich in contradictions: mellow but dramatic, childish but mature, dulcet but dark, her sweet-sounding voice rides the heavy bass with easy confidence. These many incongruities were picked up on early in her career by her stylist. Samantha Burkhart, who has been working with Eilish since the latter was an unsigned 14-year-old, was immediately drawn to the singer’s dress sense. “The look was interesting because it didn’t sync up with the music,” she tells me. The “look” is one that has become synonymous with Eilish: oversized everything. There has been much speculation about Eilish’s choice of clothing, which is almost entirely loud, brightly coloured, but defiantly non-revealing streetwear.
“To me she represents the antithesis of the pop generation these kids have grown up with,” says Burkhart. For sure, Eilish is everything the likes of Taylor Swift and Katy Perry are not. From her total lack of sexualisation in her aesthetic to the heavy use of visuals straight out of a horror film in her music videos, Eilish is ushering in a new era of pop.
In the video for , a live and totally non-CGI tarantula crawls out of Eilish’s mouth. A tough watch for arachnophobes like me. This would have been unthinkable from a mega-mainstream artist 15 years ago. When I was a teenager, videos like this were reserved for the likes of Marilyn Manson who couldn’t be classed as a pop star. And far from being a pawn in this creative movement, she’s actively driving it. She’s known for conceptualising her own videos and is even up for a video editing VMA.
What’s more, Burkhart insists that the baggy clothes thing is “all Billie”. Far from a look that’s been manufactured by record execs for maximum marketability, it’s one that she’s invented for herself largely because it’s comfortable and practical.
“Movement and how things feel is really what drives the bagginess,” says Burkhart, citing Eilish’s dance background. “She lives in this place of genderlessness and ambivalence towards clothing, which I think is very freeing in a lot of ways. She’s not buying into the hyper-sexualised idea of what femininity is.” In an age where women’s bodies are still the focus of intense scrutiny, dressing for comfort bang in the middle of the public eye is almost a revolutionary act.
Burkhart, who requests almost exclusively men’s clothes for Eilish, was initially met with reticence by designers, who would direct her towards their women’s wear. She says this has changed over the past year. “I haven’t gotten a single comment from a PR in over a year,” she says. “People are realising if they want to participate in what she’s doing it has to be a more fluid conversation.” This sea change, perhaps, is why Buckhart suggests Eilish (who happens to count Dave Grohl among her fans) is her generation’s Kurt Cobain.
Does Billie Eilish care what anyone else thinks?
Both in terms of her look and her chord-striking lyrics, there’s a strong sense of “relatable” being the new “aspirational”. “Billie Eilish doesn’t really care about anyone’s opinion,” writes an anonymous 13-year-old fan from Belgium. “She wears what she wants and doesn’t care about people talking shit about her.”
“I love Billie’s style,” writes 17-year-old Megan from Michigan. “She inspires me to be myself and wear whatever I want.” What Eilish seems to be touching on, both stylistically and lyrically, is the collective desire of a generation of girls, post-#MeToo, to take control, to be their own creative directors.
“The world is more complicated than it was 10 years ago,” says Burkhart. And the soundtrack to this complicated new world is Billie Eilish.
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