17-year-old Billie Eilish began her musical career accidentally after releasing what is now her most popular single, “Ocean Eyes,” at the age of 14. She originally produced this song with her brother, FINNEAS, and released it on SoundCloud to allow her dance teacher access to the track in order to choreograph a dance to it. After this SoundCloud release, she gained overnight popularity and began her transition into a pop sensation. This growth in popularity continued over the years. At the age of 15, she had 257,000 followers on Instagram, and just a year later she was at 6.3 million followers. Currently, she stands at 15.6 million followers.
In 2017, Billie Eilish released her debut EP titled, don’t smile at me, which featured 9 new songs.
Two years later, and Billie Eilish has just released her second album titled, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? Her new album features 12 unique songs, including “bury a friend” and “wish you were gay,” which were released before her album debuted.
On the first day of the album’s release, her song, “bad guy” quickly reached number one on the Spotify Global charts and received 2.931 million U.S. streams. The other songs did not fall far behind, as “wish you were gay” took the number three spot on the charts, followed by “bury a friend” at number four.
Just a few days after the launch of this new album, people began speculating that this 2019 release will be a shoo-in for an Album of the Year nomination.
The album is very bass heavy and encompasses her unique voice throughout the tracks. It features beautiful, slow ballads such as “i love you” and “listen before i go,” but also more upbeat songs such as “bad guy” and “you should see me in a crown.”
What may be a little less evident is the album’s huge focus on Eilish’s sleep problems, including night terrors, lucid dreams and sleep paralysis. In an interview with Zane Lowe, she discussed her ongoing struggle with depression and her battle with night terrors. Upon talking about her 2019 album, she stated, “for me, in every song in the album there’s sleep paralysis; there’s night terrors, nightmares, lucid dreams.” She continues to candidly discuss her perspective on her sleep struggles and how it has affected her everyday life as well as the production of the new album. Her feelings regarding sleep paralysis are said to have been captured by her single, “bury a friend”.
She hopes that as she brings light to some of her mental health issues in the album, fans will be able to relate to and feel inspired by her music. So far she has succeeded, as fans have been raving about the new album.
Her new album is now available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. If you are interested in seeing more of Billie Eilish, she will be heading on tour in Europe and will be performing at Coachella.