Billie Eilish has a pleasing knack for confounding the gatekeepers of the music industry. The 17-year-old, who writes her own songs with her older brother, has amassed an enormous auidence over the past three years: she has more than 17 million followers on Instagram (just a casual million for every year she’s been alive), and the kind of fans who queue for days outside her concert venues. But her appeal is razor-like in its precision. To outsiders, she seems constructed of a baffling mix of styles and genres. With her long, light blue hair, heavily-lidded, soporific eyes, and sparse, trap-influenced sound, she exudes the lazy, masculine grunge of the Nineties, the pastel-coloured emo of mid-Noughties, a light smattering of health goth and a whole lot more in between. Those of us raised on Tumblr in the early 2000s might experience a sense of déjà vu when encountering Eilish’s brand, but her music is unarguably cut from the cloth of the present.
Her first album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was released in March. Thee cover sees Eilish perched on an oversized white bed – but it couldn’t be less sensual or inviting: in white joggers and thick white socks, the creepy, pupil-less whites of her eyes pop out against the dark.
Content from our partners
