i am not billie eilish (#16)
Billie Eilish entered my orbit when I was an upper classman in college. Actually, I entered hers, along with the rest of the world. Though her breakout single Ocean Eyes had been around for a few years, I had not listened to her music until she released her debut album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? (her capitalization, not mine). The album went viral. Curious about the hype, I hit play.
At first, I was not impressed, though her music was definitely unique. Her airy singing voice was unsettling but eventually it became an acquired taste. I wanted to understand why her music was so popular so I listened again and became a fan of her songs bad guy and you should see me in a crown. I always enjoy music that makes me want to dance and those songs are, in a word, bangers.
I was hooked. I checked out her new releases, clicked on her Youtube interviews, and watched her documentary. She was 17 when the album was released and I was 21.
Growing up, it seemed like every successful person was older than me, simply because I was young. Though there were child actors who were already developing strong careers when Billie Eilish broke out, her album felt like the first time a younger person outpaced me.
I want to achieve a similar level of professional success, likely due to deep feelings of inadequacy. These are feelings I handled poorly in college. If I was at a party and feeling awkward, I would comfort myself with a reminder that “I am starting a business, no one else here is.” I wanted to achieve entrepreneurial success before turning 26 and getting kicked off my parent’s health insurance. Now, I want to be a full-time working actor, an increasingly distant goal.
In developing my acting career, I have learned that luck is as important as talent. Many of my actor friends are so brilliant that I am surprised I even get to work with them. They create such real, embodied characters, yet they do not have careers that match their abilities. Unfortunately, skill alone does not make a career.
Billie is so talented, but she is also lucky. She is lucky that she was homeschooled and had the chance to develop her skills, that her song Ocean Eyes went viral on Soundcloud and got the attention of a record label, and that her brother is an equally talented producer that she enjoys working with. No matter how much talent a person has, luck is always at the table.
My acting teacher taught me an important lesson: the play lives in the audience. It means that an actor’s experience of their work can be totally different from what the audience experiences because the audience only sees what the actor does, not what they think. They see the actor pick up a spoon, not the actor’s frantic realization that they picked up the spoon on the wrong line. This lesson applies to all art because we never know the false roads, hard choices, and creative blocks an artist traversed before sharing their final work. In a Vevo interview, Billie spoke about her experience making When We All Fall Asleep. She said, “I was always- felt under pressure and anxious and felt like I wasn’t doing enough you know, right, or doing a good job or you know this isn’t good enough and I felt like I wasn’t very talented also at the time.”
That is how I feel every time I send one of these essays. The voice in my head tells me that I am a terrible writer. I keep writing because I am vindictive and want to prove the voice, which is myself, wrong. It is a Sisyphean struggle because there is no definitive metric of good writing, except maybe a Pulitzer or a compliment from Toni Morrison.
I was making breakfast this morning and I put on Happier Than Ever, a song I haven’t listened to in at least a year. Billie’s melancholic song captures her heartbreak in the timeless feeling of old Hollywood. Then, halfway through, it breaks into a mid-2000s rock ballad. The song is genius, and to me, one of the best songs of all time. I doubt she feels the same way.
I do not like all of Billie’s music. However, for certain songs, like bad guy and Happier Than Ever, I am awed by what she and Finneas (her brother and producer) created. I know I am wasting my time playing the comparison game with a single exceptional individual on a planet of eight billion people, but sometimes I cannot help myself.
Despite what I know about fame, the luck required for a successful career, and an artist’s feelings about their own work, I still strive for professional success and beat myself down when I do not achieve the high bar that I set. If I ever reconcile my sense of inadequacy, I wonder if my ambition will disappear as well.
I must learn to accept my life as it is. Comparing myself to professionally successful people does nothing but make me unhappy and impede my creativity. I am glad Billie’s music exists in the world, but I have to make my own. Figuratively. I am not a musician.
P.S. In a separate interview about her first album, she literally said, “I hated every second of it. I hated writing. I hated recording. I literally hated it. I would’ve done anything else. I remember thinking there’s no way I’m making another album after this. Absolutely not.”