Sudden fame is surely terrifying, even for those who welcome it. For teenage pop stars, it’s worse. There are more constraints. They have to at least give the appearance of going to school. They have to pretend to be grateful and polite, because no one wants to hear teenagers complain about anything, especially about being successful and rich.
No one told 16-year-old singer-songwriter Billie Eilish any of this before she started, though she had a vague idea: She was raised in Los Angeles, and her older brother Finneas O’Connell, who is now her producer and collaborator, used to appear on “Glee.”
A few years ago, Eilish recorded her own version of one of O’Connell’s songs, the moony ballad “Ocean Eyes,” and uploaded it to SoundCloud. She didn’t expect anything to happen, but of course it did. It eventually went platinum (as did a follow-up single, the Khalid collaboration “Lovely”), and Eilish dropped her major label debut EP, “Don’t Smile at Me,” last year.
Eilish is made for these times: She’s surly and magnetic, friendly and wary, foul-mouthed and earnest. She knows how to tap dance, assiduously cultivates her devoted fanbase, and wouldn’t mind one day being like Donald Glover, because he works hard and does what he wants. In a video announcing her tour, a giant tarantula crawled out of her mouth.