Now 22 years old, Billie Eilish wants to introduce herself to the world once again with “Hit Me Hard and Soft”. Indeed, the artist we met at just 17 years old returns to her roots with an album similar to her first opus, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?”, released when she was the best version of itself.
To offer an album that corresponds to who she is today, Billie Eilish got lost but found herself better. She, who was thrust onto the scene at just 17 years old with her first album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?”, saw the young woman she was lurking in the shadows to let the artist in her blossom. And no 17 year old is ready for that.
Fame, which often makes us dream, tends to make the people we admire feel unhappy and very alone, even if it means locking themselves up at home and experiencing nothing but solitude. Solitude can become reassuring because it allows security. This is what Billie Eilish explained to Angie Martoccio For Rolling Stone : “It’s definitely not in the job description. Some really scary things have happened in my personal life and my safety has been compromised multiple times, and it’s a big part of my life. It’s something that I have to live with… I’m afraid. For a damn good reason I’m afraid of people, I’m afraid of the world. […] It means being active and vulnerable and being seen and filmed…”
By locking herself in her house because the outside scared her, the artist was an enigma to the general public and at first glance, she liked the idea. “It was something I was striving for,” she confessed before continuing, “I was so obsessed with this mystery and I think that’s 100% why I didn’t I made no friends because I didn’t want anyone to know me, because I wanted everyone to think of me as mysterious and cool. I loved the idea of people feeling that way but then I was like, ‘. Oh, here I am sitting alone in my room, loving the feeling that everyone thinks I’m really cool, but I’m actually not getting anything out of it. I’m not enjoying anything in my life at all.'”
And on her twentieth birthday, Billie made a sad observation: “I looked around and every single person was one of my employees. I was like, ‘Oh shit, I literally have no friends. I don’t have people who see me as an equal . I don’t have people who aren’t afraid of me.. Grammys but no friends to go out with, chat with, experience or even do nothing when you’re in your early twenties, that’s the hidden side of fame that the “Lost Cause” singer discovered. This observation plunged her into depression last summer. In her diary, she had written “I know I’m lucky but I’m so unhappy.”
“It was just more real than ever before.”she said. “In my entire life, I’ve never really been a happy person. I’ve been a joyful person, but not a happy person. I experience joy and laughter and I can find pleasure in things, but I’m a depressed person. I’ve suffered from a lot of depression my whole life. When things happen to my soul, or anything, the thing I’ve always held on to is, ‘Well, this. It will pass. It will come in waves and it will get worse and better.’ And that always brought me comfort, and this time I literally said to myself, ‘I don’t even care.'”
His parents, his brother, Finneasand her childhood best friend, Zoe Donahoe, helped her not to sink further, as well as sex and more specifically masturbation which, in general, allows her to decompress and gain self-confidence: “Personal pleasure is a huge part of my life and a huge, huge help to me. People should care. I can’t stress this enough, as someone with extreme body issues and dysmorphia.” To learn to love her body, Eilish masturbates in front of a mirror: “It creates such a raw, deep connection with myself and my body. And I have a love for my body that I never really had…”
In addition to gaining self-confidence, Billie realized one thing: she had to leave her house to find this person she calls her “2019 self”, around which time she released “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” that she considers to be “the best time of his life” : “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I haven’t had fun in seven years.’ That’s definitely the feeling I had because who has the experience of going to the Grammys at 17 and win five? But in life, I realized that I really didn’t experience much. I didn’t go out for five years.
So even though it scares her, Billie Eilish bites into her quid and is delighted to be able to say that she “exists in the world for once”.
