Billie Eilish has revealed she feared she’d have her own celebrity breakdown, akin to that of Britney Spears in 2007, where she’d shave her head or something as equally drastic.
The singer admitted that while on tour in Europe last year she was terrified it was too much for her, coming to the realisation of how and why celebrities nope out due to stress.
Recently opening up about her struggles and battle with depression, the Bad Guy singer, who scooped the Grammys last week, opened up about her fears of celebrity.
‘As a fan growing up, I was always like, What the f*ck is wrong with them?’ Billie told the latest issue of Vogue. ‘All the scandals. The Britney moment. You grow up thinking they’re pretty and they’re skinny; why would they f*ck it up? But the bigger I get, the more I’m like, Oh, my God, of course they had to do that. In my dark places I’ve worried that I was going to become the stereotype that everybody thinks every young artist becomes, because how can they not? Last year, when I was at my lowest point during the tour in Europe, I was worried I was going to have a breakdown and shave my head.’
The star discovered she began writing about depression at the age of 11 – but not because she was necessarily feeling that way at the time.
Finding a cache of old songs, including one titled Why Not, she discovered the morbid premise being that ‘if she killed herself, everything would be the same; the stars would still shine, the sun would still come out, the seasons would still change. So why not?’
She said: ‘That was the song, at 11. And I was totally happy. I had never felt suicidal, and I didn’t want to feel that way, but I liked the idea of writing a song about something I didn’t know about.’
In fact, Billie and her brother Finneas O’Connell spent their childhood writing lyrics from the viewpoint of characters they created to give themselves an array of different perspectives.
Together, they wrote Bellyache about a girl who had killed her friends and is dealing with grief over her actions, as well as the megahit Bury A Friend which told the story of a monster hiding under the bed.
Billie – real name Billie O’Connell – insists there is nothing unusual about this as all of her music idols all use this technique when creating their music.
She said: ‘Just because the story isn’t real doesn’t mean it can’t be important.
‘There’s a difference between lying in a song and writing a story. There are tons of songs where people are just lying. There’s a lot of that in rap right now, from people that I know who rap. It’s like, “I got my AK-47, and I’m f***in’… “ and I’m like, what? You don’t have a gun. “And all my bitches…” I’m like, which bitches? That’s posturing, and that’s not what I’m doing.’
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