The 17-year-old singer is known as the “queen of heartbreak music” when she sings about death and depression.

Billie Eilish attracted attention with her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? ( WWAFA,WDWG ). Released on March 29, the album immediately ” broke ” the charts, ranking number one in 16 countries, including two major markets in the UK and the US. The 17-year-old female singer is the first person born in the 21st century to have an album top the Billboard 200 chart after a week of release. Music critic sites Allmusic, Guardian, and The Times all rated the album 4/5 stars. Meanwhile, music magazine NME gave it a perfect score with the description “a product that changes modern music”. The New York Times affirmed that she is “not simply a 17-year-old pop star”.

Billie’s ghostly image on the new album cover. Photo: Billie Eilish.

Billie was born in 2001 in America, to a family of actress parents. She wrote her first song at the age of four, imagining herself being sucked into a black hole. From then on, the singer composed and recorded her own songs at home with the help of Finneas – her brother four years older than her. At the end of 2015, she posted the song Ocean Eyes on the online music site Soundcloud. The song quickly became famous worldwide. Before the release of her debut album, Billie’s online songs had received more than one billion views.

She attracts listeners with her sweet voice and singing style that is often compared to female singers Lana Del Rey and Lorde. All three have in common that they often sing in a low, hoarse voice and speak words slowly. Billie also confirmed that Lana is a big inspiration for her. Meanwhile, Allmusic newspaper compared her to the “evil” version of famous singer Lorde. The main materials used by Billie are Pop music, Hip hop and electronic music. She makes music according to minimalism. Songs are often short in duration, have few instruments, and use harmonic loops or simple electronic sounds. Billie uses a lot of silence in her songs, enhancing her voice and creating a slow, quiet rhythm.

Billie became an internet phenomenon with songs written with her brother Finneas (left) at home. Photo:  Instagram.

Her compositions have dark colors about monsters, murders and even suicidal thoughts. She uses a lot of internet language and slang. Many songs give listeners the feeling of reading a status or comment on Instagram . Billie’s lyrics are flexible and poetic, with many metaphors. Strong words but not obscene. “Modern songs are boring. ‘I love you but I’m sad because you don’t love me’. We can write that sentence in more interesting ways. My compositions are rich in fantasy. We don’t need to killing real people to write a detective story, right?” – Billie shared in an interview with BBC .

MV “Bury A Friend” – the album’s title song.

The album title WWAFA, WDWG (When We All Sleep, Where Do We Go?) is a line from Bury A Friend (roughly translated: Bury a Friend ). In June 2018, Billie attended the funeral of rapper XXXTENTACION, her close friend. This guy was shot dead on the street when he was 20 years old. Genius – a website that analyzes song lyrics – believes that the song was inspired by the death of a famous rapper. MV Bury A Friend also has many images related to him. Billie shares this song as the starting point for the entire theme of the album.

In the product, which lasts more than 42 minutes, she paints a portrait of herself: an extravagant, careless person who lives a troubled life and always thinks about death. She describes herself through her lyrics as “a bad person”, “wants to control the world”, “addicted to pain and wants to find liberation”. The songs are connected in both content and melody. Each song on the album deals with a different nighttime phenomenon she has experienced, such as sleep paralysis or “lucid dreams”. I know I’m dreaming)…

Famous rocker Dave Grohl called her “the new Kurt Cobain”. Kurt Cobain committed suicide when he was 27 years old and created a wave of melancholy among the young generation in the 1990s in America. The Guardian commented that “she embodies an online teenager, living in a complex culture”. Billie grew up in an American society filled with violence, where information about shootings and killings appeared constantly on the internet and media.

In addition to compliments, some comments criticized her for romanticizing death and depression. According to CollegeView, the world is experiencing a wave of “suffering” artists. These people focus on the topic of mental illness and promote self-destructive behaviors such as slashing and suicide. Billie and XXXTENTACION are used as examples of prominent artists of the above wave. “They romanticize depression and make young people think having it is fashionable,” the newspaper wrote.

Billie Eilish is nicknamed “the queen of heartbreak music”.

With more than 17 million followers on Instagram , Billie’s music and style influence a large number of young people. In July 2018, she posted a status on Twitter: “Life is so boring. I haven’t smiled all month.” Her fans immediately responded and created a competition to see who could not laugh the longest.

Eillish says her music does not magnify sadness or promote competitions for who has suffered the most. “I don’t see anything bad in singing about hurt. I learned a lot from past pain. My music is about sharing and caring. I think my fans are people who are true to themselves and ready to absorb new things” – the female singer shared with Apple Music.

Besides negative topics, she also sings about very “juvenile” issues such as unrequited love or breaking up with her boyfriend. Many of Billie’s compositions show that in addition to her careless appearance, inside she also contains many feelings like many of her peers. Forbes commented: “Billie’s fans don’t love the singer because of her lovely appearance, but her lyrics speak to their thoughts.” The magazine once selected Billie as one of the nominees for “ 30 faces under 30 of the year”.