Billie Eilish broke through in the mid-2010s as one of pop’s biggest — and, at the time, youngest — new stars. Born Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell in Los Angeles in 2001, Eilish was raised by two former actors, Maggie Baird and Patrick O'Connell, who put their careers on hold to home-school Billie and her brother Finneas, with no formal curriculum. 

As a child, Elish tried acting and visual art, but eventually gravitated toward music. The family had three pianos in their house; Baird played guitar and taught both kids the basics of songwriting. Billie joined the L.A. Children’s Chorus at eight, and later began recording with Finneas, a talented producer, at their childhood home. 2015’s “Ocean Eyes” was Eilish’s first single and her breakthrough hit. Eschewing outside help, the siblings crafted her 2019 debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, by themselves in Finneas’s childhood bedroom. It became a global smash, topping charts around the world and eventually going quadruple-platinum in the US. Singles like “Bad Guy'' announced Eilish as a unique artist and generational talent, one with a sound that was intense, sparse, and intimate all at once. In 2020, Eilish won each of the Big Four Grammy categories – Best New Artist, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year – becoming the youngest artist ever to do so in the same year.

The 2021 documentary Billie Eilish: The World's a Little Blurry was an intimate portrait that showed Eilish struggling with health issues, including Tourette syndrome and leg pain. Her second album, 2021’s  Happier Than Ever, was very different from her debut. As Brittany Spanos wrote in Eilish’s second Rolling Stone cover story, “emotional abuse, power struggles, and mistrust — stories drawn from Eilish’s life and the lives of people she knows — take up much of the lyrics, alongside musings on fame and fantasies of secret romantic rendezvous. The sound is mellowed out from the haunted-house sprawl of her debut: lush, somber, mesmerizing electronic soundscapes trickle down your spine, right along with Eilish’s words.” The album was another hit, topping charts around the globe. 

Eilish, with Finneas, has recorded several songs for film, earning two Oscar nominations for Best Original Song in the process, most recently for “What Was I Made For?” from the Barbie soundtrack.  Eilish has been politically outspoken, having railed against the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and performed “Your Power,” a song about the exploitation of young women, in protest. Eilish has also spoken out on a host of other issues, including body positivity and climate change; in 2022 she started the climate action event Overheated. In late 2023, Eilish revealed she was nearly finished with her third album.