Billie Eilish speaks about her rise to fame and the craziness that comes with it in a new interview with Variety.
The 17-year-old admits she felt attacked as she tried to make her way into the crowd after her recent performance at the Austin City Limits festival.
She tells the mag, “[It] was probably the worst it’s ever been. I felt attacked, in a way. It sounds weird to say because if you [go into the crowd] you’re gonna get that reaction, and that’s totally fine and I expect it.”
“But, jeez, somebody choked me, and they pulled my arms so hard that security was literally tugging me away. People were pulling my hair; somebody stole my ring; they were grabbing my chest and parts of me that, like, I don’t need people grabbing! Of course, they’re just excited. I get it. But I do still have to live with it, you know?”
Eilish also talks about starting out in the industry and being told her music was ‘too dark.’
“I didn’t realize that I was saying and touching on aspects in life that were deeper than the average song. I didn’t try to do that – I just did it.”
“When I was starting out, one of the only things I heard was that the music was too dark, too sad, too depressing, that it wasn’t happy enough. There was this period where all I was hearing was ‘Smile! Talk about how much you love yourself!’ – and I was literally at a time when I didn’t love myself.”
“Now I can, but then, I was a little 14-year-old. I didn’t know anything about self-love or self-care. All I knew was the stuff that I knew, and a lot of it was bad and negative. That’s what I wanted to write about, and that’s why people relate to it. I mean, even the Beatles have songs that are just like, ‘I’m miserable!’”
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Eilish adds that she was “not prepared” for her meteoric rise to stardom, insisting: “I just liked music, and I didn’t know that I had to have a whole…” while gesturing towards everything surrounding her. “It was a really weird thing to be put on me when I was 15-years-old.”
