MUM TELLS OF SHOCK Pluck of the Eilish
RAPID RISE OF £23M TEEN BILLIE The girl who was homeschooled after Columbine horror, had huge hit at 13, played Glasto at 17 & recorded Bond theme in bedr oom
MUM Maggie Baird looks round her daughter’s little bedroom in their two-bed bungalow and wonders – how can this be where my child became one of the world’s biggest music stars?
It was here that her teenager Billie Eilish would sit making up songs, like millions of other adolescent dreamers around the globe.
Only one day, in 2015, one of her creations posted on a music streaming service blew the roof off Maggie’s “little home with a yard” in Los Angeles.
The song Ocean Eyes propelled Billie, then 13, into pop’s stratosphere.
And four years later – in the same bedroom – she recorded the theme for the latest Bond movie.
In between was a whirlwind rise in which she wowed Glastonbury, won five Grammys and became the most streamed artist on the planet.
It is little wonder that Maggie, 61, says she is simply stunned.
She said: “I hear Billie described as one of the biggest stars in the world and that’s very hard for me to process.
“We live exactly the same way except our house is full of stuff – lots more shoes and lots more fan art.
Shocking
“We live this very normal life when we’re home except it’s also very abnormal because we do crazy things.
“People look at the big markers like Glastonbury and they’re like, ‘Is your mind blown?’ And I’m like, ‘My mind has been blown from the beginning.’
“When you have a 13-year-old whose managers are calling and record labels are calling, that’s really shocking.”
Now 18, Billie’s life has never been 100 per cent conventional.
She was born in December 2001 and her Irish-american mum and dad Maggie and Patrick, both actors, named her Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’connell.
Maggie, who once had a small part in The X-files, said they had to live “day to day or cheque to cheque”.
They already had a fiveyear- old son, Finneas, and ended up giving the children t he t wo bedrooms in their cramped home while they slept on a futon in the lounge.
Little Billie had severe separation anxiety and slept in her parents’ bed until she was ten. And she was homeschooled along with Finneas, who would go on to star in TV musical comedy, Glee.
Maggie explained: “I was from Colorado and when the Columbine mass shooting happened in school, that really scared me. It planted the seed for homeschooling for me, especially in LA where some of the schools were questionable. It was just a philosophy we sort of grew with.
“We loved being with our children so much and were like, ‘Gosh, do we really want to be away from them for most of their life?’”
Their kids were close and Billie would collaborate with her brother on songs.
When they uploaded Ocean Eyes on to Soundcloud, it went viral that night.
A year later, after being signed to Interscope Records, Billie released the
Bond No Time to Die, starring Daniel Craig
Family Billie at the 2019 Billboard Women In Music event with her brother and parents
song as her debut single and it has since racked up more than 200 million streams on Spotify, where the youngster has more than 54 million monthly listeners. Billie made her debut at Glastonbury aged 17 and has already been tipped as a future headliner.
She also has more than 50 million followers on Instagram and a net worth of £23million, but she still lives at the family home in LA’S modest Highland Park neighbourhood. Finneas moved
out last year to be with his girlfriend, but the equipment he and his sister used to record her debut album, When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? is still in his cramped bedroomcum-recording studio.
The album made Billie the youngest female solo act to top the UK album c charts. Lyrics a are scribbled o on the walls where they used to mark their height as kids. And i n a speci special edition of James Corden’s Carpool Kara Karaoke, Billie revealed that she recorded he her vocals on Finneas’s bed.
Maggie, who recorded an album of country songs in 2009, describes the first f few years of her daughter’s success as “very, ver very stressful”.
She said: “You’ve got a teenage girl you’re worrying about and looking after a and trying to protect and support in a business busines you don’t really know much about.
“And you’ve got to learn a lot of things really fast, and be there for them.”
There have been other challenge challenges, too. Billie has been open about her stru struggles with depression, which Maggie says were made worse by a nasty dance injury at the age of 13.
She recalled: “It went on for quite a while. Moving was really the thing that kept her stable, so when she lost that physical activity, that’s what led her closer down the path of depression.
“Fortunately ly she had music, which really, really helped, but you need that physical activity – there’s no replacement for it.
“We still struggle ruggle getting it into her life. It’s not ot easy on tour.”
Billie’s new w single, My
Future, was released earlier this week eek – and t here’s no doubt
Maggie will remain emain by her daughter’s er’s side to guide e her through the world of fame. But she said: “I’m sure there are days where she would much rather that her mother was not involved. There’s no controlling Billie – she’s an authentic person.
“She’s strong-willed and speaks her own mind, but she also listens to reason.”
Maggie believes that th the fact Billie still lives in her childhood “home with a yard” despite her riches also keeps he her grounded.
“Having a small hou house and a close family was part of a philosop philosophy that happened to work out with not having hav a lot of money,” Maggie said. “But I think th that’s still part of our general feeling,”
“Finneas and B Billie may end up in the biggest hous houses ever in the world, but you k know, you try to teach your v values. You try to say, ‘Pu ‘Put your money where it matters and keep
your family close.’”