Billie’s Teen Spirit

For Billie Eilish’s first ROLLING STONE cover [“Triumph of the Weird,” RS 1330], traditional was out of the question. Photographer Petra Collins explained, “There have been a lot of young women on the covers, and I was like, ‘I want to do the opposite of what the Britney Spears cover was.’ ” For reader Rebecca Stout, this resonated. “As a mother of a teenage girl, what can I say but thank you, Billie Eilish, for proving girls don’t have to shop their body parts in order to be sexy, cool, or successful.” Other readers did not share in this sense of empowerment. “Why the morbid, downer picture of Billie on the cover?” asked Anne Campbell. But for many, it was Eilish’s music — not her image — that mattered most. Reader Kevin Dodd wrote, “Eilish’s critics need to understand that she and her brother did things on their own. Unlike so many pop artists, they’re not the product of record-label commercialism. If we want new music to be creative and uniquely inspired, then we need to support these kinds of performers.” Eilish fan Joshua Hess raved, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? is the first album I’ve listened to start to finish. I’ve had it on repeat all summer.” @sarahajeel: I don’t think I’ve ever read a cover story where the opening paragraph is the artist being forced to clean their room!

“She’s better than 95 percent of pop artists and [did it] without letting the industry decide what she sounds like.”

—Mark Gard, via the internet