Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell (born December 18, 2001) is an American singer and songwriter. She first gained public attention in 2015 with her debut single “Ocean Eyes”, written and produced by her brother Finneas O’Connell, with whom she collaborates on music and live shows. In 2017, she released her debut extended play (EP), titled Don’t Smile at Me. Commercially successful, it reached the top 15 of record charts in numerous countries, including the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

Eilish’s first studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019), debuted atop the US Billboard 200 and UK Albums Chart. It was one of the best-selling albums of the year, buoyed by the success of its fifth single “Bad Guy”, Eilish’s first number-one on the US Billboard Hot 100. This made her the first artist born in the 21st century to release a chart-topping single. The following year, Eilish performed the theme song “No Time to Die” for the James Bond film of the same name, which topped the UK Singles Chart and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2022. Her subsequent singles “Everything I Wanted”, “My Future”, “Therefore I Am”, and “Your Power” peaked in the top 10 in the US and UK. Her second studio album, Happier Than Ever (2021), topped charts in 25 countries.

Eilish has received multiple accolades, including seven Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, two Guinness World Records, three MTV Video Music Awards, three Brit Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. She is the youngest artist in Grammy history to win all four general field categories—Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year—in the same year. She is also the first person born in the 21st century to win an Academy Award. She was featured on Time magazine’s inaugural Time 100 Next list in 2019 and the Time 100 in 2021. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Billboard, Eilish is the 26th-highest-certified digital singles artist and one of the most successful artists of the 2010s. She has a history of political activism, focusing on climate change awareness and women’s equality. She was honored as one of the BBC 100 Women in December 2022.

Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell was born in Los Angeles, California, on December 18, 2001. She is the daughter of actress and teacher Maggie Baird and actor Patrick O’Connell, both of whom are also musicians and work on Eilish’s tours. Eilish is of Irish and Scottish descent.[15] She was conceived via in vitro fertilization. Her middle name, Eilish, was originally meant to be her first name, while Pirate was to be her middle name. She was raised in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Eilish and her brother Finneas were homeschooled by Baird, a decision their parents made to spend time with them and give them the freedom to pursue their interests. Baird taught Eilish and Finneas the basics of songwriting. Eilish said her brother and mother inspired her to get into music.[21] Their parents encouraged the siblings to express themselves and explore whatever they wanted, including art, dancing, and acting. Eilish also performed at talent shows and joined the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus at age eight. At age six, she started playing the ukulele. She wrote her first “real” song at age 11 for her mother’s songwriting class. The song is about the zombie apocalypse, inspired by the television series The Walking Dead from which she took script lines and episode titles for the song. Eilish had gone on some acting auditions, which she disliked; however, she enjoyed 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 also took dance classes until 2016, when a growth plate injury put an end to her dancing career and she turned her focus toward recording music.

In 2015, 13-year-old Eilish began working on songs with her brother Finneas, who had been writing and producing for several years and had his own band. The first songs they recorded together were called “She’s Broken” and “Fingers Crossed”, the former written by Finneas and the latter by Eilish. “We recorded them and put them out on SoundCloud, just for fun,” she recalled.

On November 18, 2015, Eilish released the song “Ocean Eyes”. The track was written, mixed, and produced by Finneas, who had originally created it for his band the Slightlys, before deciding it would be a better fit for Eilish’s vocals. He gave it to Eilish when her dance teacher at the Revolution Dance Center asked them to write a song for choreography. The siblings uploaded the song to SoundCloud, where Diaz could access and download it. The song received several hundred thousand listens in two weeks, and Finneas’s manager, Danny Rukasin, reached out to him to discuss Eilish’s potential. In Rukasin’s opinion, she could achieve significant success with Finneas’s help.

In January 2016, Finneas and his manager arranged a deal in which Apple Music signed Eilish to A&R company Platoon, specializing in packaging emerging artists before they get a major-label contract. Eilish then got a publicist, who connected her to the luxury fashion brand Chanel, and a stylist, both of whom helped shape her image. On March 24, 2016, a music video for “Ocean Eyes” directed by Megan Thompson was premiered on Eilish’s official YouTube channel. “Ocean Eyes” and Eilish would receive praise and promotion from various media outlets and marketers, including radio stations and music supervisors such as Beats 1, KCRW, BBC One, Zane Lowe, Jason Kramer, Annie Mac, and Chris Douridas.

On June 23, 2016, Eilish and Finneas released “Six Feet Under” through SoundCloud as her second single. A homemade music video for the song was released on June 30, 2016. It was directed by Eilish and edited by her mother, Maggie Baird.

In August 2016, Justin Lubliner, who had noticed Eilish’s talent back in 2015 when he first heard “Ocean Eyes”, signed her to Darkroom and Interscope Records. He developed her rollout as an artist, taking inspiration from the model of hip hop artists such as Travis Scott and Chance the Rapper, not relying on one big single and focusing on creating a “persona and distinct aesthetic”. Darkroom and Interscope Records re-released “Six Feet Under” and “Ocean Eyes” as singles for digital download and streaming on November 17 and 18, 2016, respectively. On November 22, 2016, a dance performance music video for “Ocean Eyes” was uploaded to Eilish’s YouTube channel.

On January 14, 2017, Eilish released an EP with four remixes by Astronomyy, Blackbear, Goldhouse, and Cautious Clay for “Ocean Eyes”, and released another EP for “Six Feet Under” featuring remixes by Blu J, Gazzo, Jerry Folk, and Aire Atlantica.[48] Following the success of the “Ocean Eyes” remixes, Eilish released “Bellyache” on February 24, 2017, A music video for the song was released on March 22, 2017, and was directed by Miles and AJ. Eilish later released “Bored” on March 30, 2017, as part of the soundtrack to the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. A music video for “Bored” was later released on June 26, 2017. In March of the same year, Apple Music showcased Eilish at the South by Southwest music festival. On June 30, 2017, Eilish released “Watch”. Eilish later released another single, “Copycat”, which was released on July 14, 2017, and announced the release of her debut EP, Don’t Smile at Me. Eilish later released “Idontwannabeyouanymore” and “My Boy”. On August 11, 2017, Eilish released Don’t Smile at Me. The EP was a sleeper hit, reaching number 14 on the US Billboard 200. Eilish embarked on the Don’t Smile at Me Tour throughout October 2017 in support of her EP. Eilish released “Bitches Broken Hearts” through SoundCloud on November 10, 2017.

Eilish’s team worked with Spotify, which promoted her on its most popular playlist, “Today’s Top Hits”. The Baffler described Eilish’s sound as fitting into the “streambait” genre consisting of largely “mid-tempo, melancholy pop” influenced by Lana Del Rey, whose “singing style, bleakness, and… hip-hop influenced production” shaped the aesthetic. Eilish’s commercial success expanded with her Spotify promotion. In September 2017, Apple Music named Eilish their Up Next artist, which followed with a short documentary, a live session EP and an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s radio station Beats 1. That month, the live EP titled Up Next Session: Billie Eilish was released. On December 15, 2017, Eilish released her collaboration with American rapper Vince Staples titled “&Burn”, which is a remix of her previously released single “Watch”. It was later included on the expanded edition of Don’t Smile at Me.