Billie Eilish in Vogue Australia and LA Times
Introducing our August cover star, #BillieEilish! Read our full interview with the #EverythingIWanted artist, where she chats about her complicated relationship with the internet, the price of fame and the “new Billie”: https://t.co/1pQmtAm9ZD @billieeilish pic.twitter.com/ejeevwJ8KG
- Vogue Australia (@vogueaustralia) July 16, 2021
- “I said so many things then that I totally don’t agree with now, or think the opposite thing,” she says. “The weirdest thing is how nothing ever goes away once it’s on the internet. Every interview I did when I was 15 is still out there, and I think about it constantly.”
- “I think about it all the time because people that are like global idols say these things to me and about me that are the most crazy shit I’ve ever heard!” she says. “I don’t know how to process it or believe it, you know, it doesn’t feel real to me. When people say, ‘Live in the moment’, it’s really hard ... I feel like whenever I have tried to make it a point to be in the moment, all I’m thinking about is if I’m in the moment or not.”
- “It really sucks for me to have the image be important... I wish I could just be like: ‘Oh, I don’t care. You guys do it.’ You know? But the thing is that I’ve done that before and it doesn’t make me feel good. It doesn’t satisfy me. So it’s a ton of work to try to control the image and you can only do it so much, because people are gonna think whatever they think. But it has been so vitally important to have the image that I want, and try to be seen how I want to be seen. ... Of course, it didn’t really work ... It’s really hard to control the narrative in a position like mine, right?” Eilish says. “You can’t really control it that much, but you can try.”
- “Things I once enjoyed / Just keep me employed now,” she voices at the outset of the album’s opening track, “Getting Older.” ... “That line isn’t really, like, ‘Oh, boohoo, I’m sad’ - it’s really just a f-ing fact,” Eilish says. “Things that I enjoy can sometimes just turn into things that feel like a burden, and it’s really weird. Like, ‘Oh, this is something I used to love and now it feels like a job.’ It’s not, like, ‘Oh, I hate this now.’ It’s different. It’s changed.”
- But even after she settled on the blond - a color she “could f-ing let outdoors or at the gas station” - she didn’t know what overall look she was going for with her second album. With the music almost finished, she went home one night and lay on the couch. It was raining outside, so she lighted some candles and put on a fire. She started playing Julie London and was suddenly overcome by bliss. “I thought: ‘This is what I think I want my album to feel like: Julie London,’” she remembers. “Not the songs, but the feeling - longing, kind of dreamy and curious.”
Best known for her recording of the torch song “Cry Me a River,” London was a stylish, sultry-voiced singer of jazz and pop ballads in the 1950s and ‘60s. She often sported pin curls and chansonette bras, a look that served as inspiration for a buxom pin-up character featured throughout Eilish’s new merch.
“It’s like me, if I was what I wish I was,” Eilish says, pointing to the drawing on a button she’s pinned to her shirt. “I want to be that girl. Are you kidding me? I would love to be a hot girl.” - “I have experienced some stuff that I have never spoken about, and I don’t want to at all,” she says. “I don’t want to f-ing talk about it. I don’t want to tell anyone, let alone the entire internet. It’s embarrassing to go through stuff like that. It’s why a lot of women and men - but especially women - don’t tell anyone when they’re going through it.
“But at the same time,” she adds, “even though I haven’t really done anything for [the #MeToo movement], it’s really important that young women know that it can happen to anyone. Just being taken advantage of.” - During the writing process, Eilish said she drew upon artists like Marina Diamandis - previously known as Marina and the Diamonds and now as Marina - who channel eclectic voices in their singing. “Marina and Lana Del Rey do that, and I’ve always loved that about them,” Eilish says. “They try new s- and don’t get scared of having a different voice or singing in character. Marina has talked about how her lyrics use different characters and situations she comes up with. It doesn’t all have to be what you’re going through at that exact time.”
- She hopes her fans will respect how much she’s been willing to share with them this time around - even if it leaves them with more questions than answers. “Hopefully they’re grateful,” Eilish says. “I really want to be appreciated for it. Even though I come off as very open and bold, I don’t tell the internet s- about my actual life because I don’t think that anybody should, actually. That can make you go crazy when there’s 80-f-ing-8 million people watching you.”
It was hard to narrow down the quotes from the LA Times interview, recommend checking it out in full!
sources vogue australia + la times