A new documentary puts 19-year-old Billie Eilish in the spotlight. Credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
![](https://staging.unherd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/sarah-100x100.jpg)
Teenage singer-songwriter Billie Eilish has two trademarks: showing a lot, and showing nothing. She delivers lyrics about suicide, self-harm, Xanax, heartache and trouble, baring all the seething trauma of adolescence. Since her debut single “Ocean Eyes” became a hit, when she was just 14, she’s been baring her soul to the world. But her body has not been on display. While pop music in general trades on female flesh, with maximum tits and ass at every opportunity, Eilish dresses in baggy streetwear-style outfits.
Her most revealing video, “Not My Responsibility”, is so dimly lit that she’s barely visible at all; it feels more like a confrontation than a seduction. In the shadow, you can just make out that she’s wearing a bikini top, while her whispered voiceover challenges the viewer for all the ways they might judge her body. But of course, keeping her body relatively concealed didn’t actually stop people from judging it: a paparazzo shot of her wearing a perfectly decent strappy vest and shorts kicked off a tiresome round of body-shaming followed by clapbacks to the body-shamers.
“Not My Responsibility” was released when Eilish was 18, by which time she’d passed from “promising” to “successful” to “terrifyingly, staggeringly famous” in a remarkably short time. The documentary The World’s a Little Blurry (new to Apple TV) tracks this extraordinary path, bringing home how bizarre her life has been: fly-on-the-wall style footage shows her with her family, working on music with her brother in his shabby-looking bedroom, then heading out out to play the global superstar. Her designer stage outfits go through the family washing machine.
Other stars say they’re like their fans, but with Eilish — at least at the start — it’s really true. In concert footage (recorded pre-Covid), she performs her songs of melancholic ecstasy to an audience of girls who look just like her — one mass of self-ironising, tragic girlhood with their eyes closed in the bliss of pain and their phones held high. In Salt Lake City, she descends from the stage to embrace them. “They’re not my fans,” she tells the camera later, “they’re like a part of me.” She’s still a child at this point: 17 years old and about to record her gigantically successful debut album When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We All Go?
That’s near the start of the documentary. Towards the end, we see another encounter between her and the public, from about a year later, by which time When We Fall Asleep has become number one in 37 countries and made Eilish the youngest female artist to top the UK album chart. She’s doing a post-gig meet-and-greet in New York, but it doesn’t have the spontaneous affection of the earlier scene. Instead, it goes off-script and Eilish walks away.
Of course, someone comments on social media that she was rude. Eilish then berates her team (which includes her mother) for leaving her exposed:
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeLet’s hope Eilish matures gracefully the way Kate Bush did in her career. That isn’t to compare the two, but Bush also started out as a teen and she had a fabulous and quirky musical career.
I’m more worried about Nandi Bushnell. Being told since the age of 9 that she’s a world class drummer that can hold her own with seasoned pros, she’s gonna be burnt out, stagnating and used up before her teenage years are even over.
Everyone thinks they’re being super encouraging to her, but they’re really just wrecking a young talent before shes even started.
Thank you for this interesting article, Sarah. Before reading, I only knew Eilish’s name vaguely from scrolling through YouTube front page suggestions. The themes you discuss apply to the public worship of prodigy figures across all industries, although it seems especially toxic in creative and performing arts industries (at least to me). Ultimately, prodigy worship is a version of ageism that highlights a person’s age over the quality of his/her work (which can also be very good, of course) and has many negatives. When news articles about prodigies come out, the implicit (or in some cases, explicit) messages are: ‘what were YOU doing at that age?’, ‘can your children do this?’ and ‘if [name of proclaimed prodigy] is at this level now, he/she will be 1000000x more epic than you when he/she reaches your adult age!’ This assumption that successful youths can outgrow and exceed their childhood/teenage glory is questionable: they may instead reach a plateau, relying on the tricks/techniques they used to attain their teenage-hood fame, or simply burn out and disappear. Unfortunately, any attempts to question excessive celebrations of youth talent usually meet the response ‘don’t be sour, you’re just jealous.’
it sounds like the biggest threat to her career will be growing out of adolescence. Imagine if she’s spotted by the paparazzi being happy, well adjusted and normal.
It a lot more invasive than even you describe. The narrative is not just about the mental collapse, possible addictions and turbulent personal relationships of the adolescent starlet. It is more about wantonly bringing these events about, according to a pre-ordained pattern. It has an almost ritualistic or religious component to it, in which those who burn too bright too soon are expected to prematurely burn away. Not for them adulthood, maturity and happiness.
Eilish is a monster of her age, which is why she seems so indivisible from her fanbase. She is entirely their creation – someone has to be her. Like Greta Thunberg, if she didn’t exist she would need to be invented to give voice to those whose fret and woe demand a visible entity to lionise. When Bowie pretended to be the Messiah Ziggy Stardust we knew he was pretending. Not so the fans of Eilish and Greta – to them they are the real deal: princesses of their disorder, worth following over the edge of the world. The quid pro quo is that the Messiah becomes the scapegoat (and we all know what happens to that unfortunate animal).
Eilish et al will be loved, worshipped, aped and celebrated, precisely until the narrative determines that they are done with. For girls, it’s a brutal coming out ceremony (remember the media countdown to Charlotte Church’s 16th birthday – when it would be legal to have sex with her?).
The animal that is the general public won’t be soothed until starlets of any medium are stripped, literally, paraded and prodded. For actresses, there is the inevitable progression to the first nude scene, usually incidental to any plot but a prurient necessity if they wish to transition to an adult career. It doesn’t matter how carefully curated the feminist dialectic is about this (that it’s empowering, voluntary and evidence of a woman in control of her body): it is a ceremonial rite of passage that demands the baring of, as you put it, tits and ass.
It’s so pervasive that very few young actresses escape it. For example, a nineteen-year-old Thomasin McKensie’s unnecessary ‘blink and you miss it’ nude scene in ‘True History of the Kelly Gang’, after she played an adolescent in ‘JoJo Rabbit’ (both in 2019).
Perhaps for boys it’s even worse as no one wants to talk about the abuse some of them have suffered in Hollywood and the music industry, which has left many addicted, insane and suicidal. Maybe this silence is because their predators are men and there is the paranoia that people will equate men who molest teenage boys with male homosexuals.
Good luck with changing any of this. It can be redressed, literally, but fundamentally the same rough beast needs to be fed (and feed it we will).
It is an article of faith that child stars never make the transition to adult stardom. Shirley Temple never did (though she made a good career elsewhere), and whatever happened to Macaulay Culkin, now 40 and with a failed marriage behind him? The only significant exception is Jodie Foster, and she seems exceptionally sensible and well balanced.
Excellent article, marred by calling the author of Peter Pan “John” Barrie. He wrote as J.M. Barrie, and the initials stood for James Matthew.
Thanks Ray.
I think Shirley Temple progressed from child star to teenage actress. She was great opposite Cary Grant in Bachelor Knight in 1947. But as you say, she was successful outside of acting.
Culkin is still acting, often playing a parody of himself. He has, though, had real problems in his life.
There are a fair number that make the transition – Ethan Hawke, Natalie Portman, Ron Howard…
I would add Drew Barrymore to the list of successes, and by all accounts she had a crazily chaotic youth.
Yes, early teen drugs and booze, apparently, and a Playboy appearance at the age of 19. Case in point really.
Wasn’t Helen Shapiro 14 when she had a number 1 with ‘Don’t treat me like a child’?
What I love about the whole Eilish persona is how she’s sold as this kind of rebellious, dispassionate, slightly nihilistic, edgy girl, channeling that GenX 90s Daria-esque “whatever” take on life, combined with a very GenZ slew of mental issues and an accompanied prescription to barbiturates and SSRIs.
But then she shills for a major American political party, which is probably the single lamest thing an artist can do, and the complete opposite of a “whatever” worldview.
And her normalization of tranquilizers and antidepressants undoubtedly influences her generation, which fattens the pockets of big Pharma.
Despite her handlers’ best efforts, nothing about Eilish is quirky, indifferent, unique, edgy, or remotely culturally risky.
She probably doesn’t realize it, but she is a walking billboard for the neoliberal, bomb-dropping, pill-pushing, corporatist establishment.
If she wasn’t—and I know this sounds cynical or even conspiratorial—she wouldn’t be as big as she is.
She is just 18 dude. And what political party would she have to support to not be a walking billboard for the “neoliberal, bomb-dropping, pill-pushing, corporatist establishment”. What US party is that? It sure isn’t the Republicans.
Her use of antidepressants is probably because she was depressed, rather than a political stance. Singing about it is what see knows. She does have tourettes so has genuine need of some medication.
And she didn’t get famous through the A&R route. It was about as organic as they come. At 13 she uploaded a song to SoundCloud.
I didn’t know much about her before the documentary. There’s a lot of talent there. It’s not just teeny bop, they’ve written some excellent ballads. I say they because it’s really a duo.
I wish Ms Eilish all the best. I confess I had never heard of her before this article. Then again I’m probably not the target audience!
Wrt “the arc from prodigy to tragedy that defines Spears,” I think South Park dealt with this in the episode “Britney’s New Look”
If she references Xanax to maintain the cool of “act like you know” that’s one thing, if she uses it’s totally another. Check out the side effects. Clean coke or meth is probably safer dose for dose and a lot more fun.
Xanax is sociopath in pill form.
A teenager experiencing social anxiety does not mean they need medical help, it means they’re a teenager.
Xanax is sociopath in pill form.
A teenager experiencing social anxiety does not mean they need medical help, it means they’re a teenager.
If she references Xanax to maintain the cool of “act like you know” that’s one thing, if she uses it’s totally another. Check out the side effects. Clean coke or meth is probably safer dose for dose and a lot more fun.
Since the title of your piece, here, at UnHerd, is a qustion, I will make a guess. It’s a guess, based on all of the experiences I’ve gone through; all of the books, magazine and newspaper articles that analyze fame that I’ve read, over the years. My guess is that Billie Eilish will take her time deciding whether or not she wants to mature or not — and that decision will have everything to do with what happens to the U.S.A. in the years to come.
I watched the documentary. She has a few things going for her. Her family is her crew and they seem level headed, almost no Californian gushy wushyness. The brother is a good mentor.
She’ll have the youth market for a few years, then I think she can sing what she wants. She has a great voice and the two of them are great singer songwriters. If they keep this level of productivity up they will have an excellent back catalog. It’s hard to imagine but she could be around in 50 years.
Remember although not marketed as such, she and her brother are a duo. That’s easier than being a solo artist.