She came out of nowhere, looking like Wednesday Addams and a voice like Barbra Streisand and Tori Amos had a baby.
Streisand, because when she lets loose, she sounds like she has the power to knock down the Eiffel Tower; Amos, because she has a breathy, emotive quiet voice that is barely a whisper, yet audible in a stadium.
And she isn’t even old enough to drink legally.
Her success over a seven-year span so early in life owes to that amazing, unprecedented voice, which has evoked many other comparisons:
A Reddit user said “basically she sounds like she should be singing in Brooklyn in 1920.”
A Quora user asked, “Is it just me, or does anyone else think Billie Eilish sounds like a combination of Melanie Martinez and Lorde?”
We first heard her in 2015, when she released her first single - “Ocean Eyes”, an indie pop tune written and produced by her brother Finneas O’Connell that charted modestly but got the attention of critics, who described the 14-year-old's song as “gauzy”... “lush”... “understated”... “moody”... “vulnerable”... “heartbreaking”... “atmospheric”.
“The layered vocals and Eilish’s great voice make this song special,” wrote Nicole Almeida for Atwood Magazine. “[The] most memorable moments on ‘Ocean Eyes’ are its most vulnerable, like the opening whispers or the sure-footed yet restrained chorus,” wrote NME.
Why is her voice so special?
The neuroscience community says it’s her whisper-voice, which evokes an ASMR reaction in the listener. This stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, a kind of ‘brain tingle’ that most people feel when certain events trigger it. Whispering is such a trigger.
Eilish’s mastery of this technique, along with her dark emo vibe, have made her a worldwide pop/rock sensation. Though her first album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was just released in 2019, she has already received seven Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Album of the Year – and is the youngest performer ever to sweep all four of those categories in the same year.
She has pulled in two American Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. According to Billboard, she is the 26th–highest digital-single-certified artist.
When Daniel Craig debuted as James Bond in Casino Royale, Billie Eilish was five years old. When he left the role with No Time to Die, 18 months ago as of this writing, Billie Eilish co-wrote and performed the title song, which went to #1 in the UK and made her the youngest performer in Bond history to record a Bond song (she was 17 at the time it was recorded), and the first artist born in the 21st century to top the UK chart.
And, at this writing, she is still under 21.
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