Billie Eilish
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Billie Eilish

Indie Music Superstar

b. December 18, 2001

“I've always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.”

Billie Eilish is a nine-time Grammy and two-time Academy Award-winning indie music superstar.

Born in Los Angeles, Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell is the daughter of a female actor and a musician. Homeschooled alongside her brother and musical collaborator, Finneas, she played the ukulele at 6 and composed her first song at 11—the same year she was diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome. She is an advocate for people with the disorder.

Before focusing on music, Eilish acted as an extra in films such as “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” In 2015, she and Finneas recorded two songs and posted them on SoundCloud for fun. They uploaded “Ocean Eyes” later that year.

In January 2016, Apple Music’s artist incubator, Platoon, signed Eilish. In August, she signed a record deal with Darkroom and Interscope Records, who officially released "Ocean Eyes.” After Apple Music featured her at SXSW, she released several singles, leading to her debut EP, “Don’t Smile at Me,” which reached No. 14 on the Billboard 200.

By 2018, Eilish launched her second tour. In 2019, she became the youngest artist to achieve one billion Spotify Streams with “Don’t Smile at Me.” That same year, her debut album, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” debuted at No. 1 on both the Billboard 200 and UK Albums Chart. As the first Gen Z artist to top the U.S. charts, she set another record with 14 songs simultaneously hitting the Billboard Hot 100.

Eilish was nominated for six 2020 Grammy Awards. She is the youngest artist to be nominated—and to win—in all four major categories. A documentary chronicling her meteoric rise, “Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry,” premiered in 2021. She won two more Grammys that year.

Eilish is the youngest musician to write and perform a James Bond theme, “No Time to Die.” It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2022, making Eilish the first person born in the 21st century to win an Oscar. The following year, “What Was I Made For?”—the song she wrote for the “Barbie” movie soundtrack—won an Academy Award and two Grammys.

To date, Eilish is the youngest person to win two Academy Awards in any category. In addition to numerous other honors, she holds 20 Guinness World Records for music.

Eilish first acknowledged her attraction to women in a 2023 Variety interview. She now openly embraces her queer identity and has been praised for exploring it in her latest album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”