Is there any current artist who has received so much interest for her age as Billie Eilish? Born in December 2001, Billie is now 19 years old. She swept the awards at numerous ceremonies with her first album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, ​WHERE DO WE GO?, which she released when she was 17. Most notably, the Grammys bestowed upon her all four of their major awards; Billie was both the youngest, and the first female artist to receive the honor. All of this, she achieved at the age of 18. When The New Yorker said the “face of pop” is “ready to abandon materialist concerns and attend to existential ones,” it selected Billie as its forerunner.

Existential concerns: it’s not the kind of subject matter generally examined in the realm of pop music. But Billie isn’t the first. There’s been a stable presence of young female pop artists who look at themselves introspectively and deal with dark topics such as depression and anxiety. Since the mid-2010s, the pop culture world has sometimes labeled these artists as “sad girls,” but it’s more of a general classification for linking them genealogically than a genre (care must be taken here, as calling it a genre could trivialize the pain of women who speak out as simply being a musical trait). Among commercially successful pop stars, this could include Lana Del Rey, Lorde and Billie, who debuted in 2011, 2013, and 2016 (via SoundCloud, in Billie’s case) respectively. If we extend the appellation back into the 20th century, Fiona Apple might also be included.

The background to sad girl culture starts with it brewing on social media in the early 2010s. Visual-based platforms such as Tumblr had really taken off and it was becoming common for teenagers to rally around individual interests. Among them was a wave of sad girls who researched or displayed signs of depression in an aesthetic manner. Living in an unstable world, many teenage girls, unlike what school promised them, suffered from discrimination under the patriarchy in their families and other social circles, and consequently from mental health issues arising from depression. They gathered in a corner of the Internet and developed a unique combination of tastes, mutual care and romanticized self-destruction. They bucked the trends of the industry-dominated pop music market by giving their attention to female artists who explored introverted emotions through their lyrics, and the interest and love fans showed them elevated these singers to popular artists. Lana Del Rey, Lorde and Billie are all original artists with their own themes and forms of expression, of course, but there’s no mistaking they started a new trend away from party-oriented pop and belting out lyrics, which artists like Katy Perry were already fielding. Audrey Wollen, an Instagram-based media artist active from the mid-2010s, grouped together all her work affected by this current under her Sad Girl Theory. “Girls’ sadness,” she said, “is not passive, self-involved or shallow; it is a gesture of liberation.”

Billie’s debut album goes through various genres as she expresses emotions and thoughts that stem from depression and anxiety. It’s an intriguing approach for an American singer, where choosing a genre is nothing short of defining your target demographic. The decision to house different varieties of music on a single album may have sounded more natural to Korean listeners as it resembles the approach typical of K-pop. Notably, because her storytelling is framed by the idea of nightmares, she allows realistic themes to coexist in a mythical aura. Billie is both hero and antihero in her music videos, and special attention is given to her appearance, which isn’t in line with the existing feminine sad girl look, but rather accentuated by baggy black and neon outfits. The artist has discussed how she consciously made the choice because she felt uncomfortable about people talking about her body, but that decision helped to make her a star, and a unique one at that, adding a certain irony to her popularity.

It was the huge success of the song “bad guy” that raised her up to her current superstar level. The combination of chant-like vocals, a riff like the theme to a mystery movie, and all this enveloped in dramatic bass thumping completely ignores the balance usually present in pop music, but that’s what made people react so enthusiastically. More importantly, “bad guy” isn’t only popular with sad girls, but with people of all generations. Billie was no doubt known as an indie artist when she first came onto the scene, but listeners her age chose “bad guy” as their kind of pop music. 2019 was a special year, with Billie’s song becoming an anthem for all regular American teens throughout the school ecosystem; homeschooled, Billie is less of an insider and more of a “weird girl.” The message of the power dynamics within sexual and romantic relationships being discussed by a teenage girl was buried within a catchy song that received ample radio airplay, and the public welcomed the birth of their new star.
 

Billie’s follow-up album, Happier Than Ever, for which she once again worked together with her brother Finneas O’Connell, was released earlier this year. According to Billie, she wanted to make it a “timeless record.” The hip hop influences present on the first album have largely disappeared, replaced instead by crooners that look to the likes of Julie London, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee as reference points. Crooning was popular in American songs of the 1950s and ’60s and is now widely remembered for contemporary recordings of jazz standards such as “Fly Me to the Moon.” Billie’s own style of whispered singing falls in line with crooners, which emerged with the invention of the microphone as a new singing style. It’s fair to say Billie borrows from the atmosphere more than she copies it wholesale, approaching a sound closer to the acoustic pop and soul indie singers of the 2000s. Some elements of the first album, like the ukulele and a cappella choruses, reappear in this sophomore album, showing that the span of genres present on her earlier album weren’t merely experimentations but representative of both Billie and Finneas’ tastes.

Happier Than Ever is the first album Billie released after her rise to fully fledged stardom. Before the album’s release, she put out a number of the tracks early as singles. Everyone wanted to know what the new album’s “bad guy” would be, but Billie seemed unconcerned with making another hit single, preferring instead to highlight as many of the tracks as possible and push the entire album with its cohesive message. She still addresses the depression and anxieties she touched on in her first album, but those themes have taken backseat here to ruminations on her sudden popularity and success: There’s plenty of ambition in “my future,” a lovely R&B number; “GOLDWING” seems to be a warning to her past self about those who would exploit the talents of true artists; and in “NDA,” she remains as ever thirsty for a relationship, but with the added secrets and distress that come along with becoming a celebrity. The story the album tells is one we wouldn’t have heard from her before she became famous.

The ninth track, “Not My Responsibility,” which was first shown as a short video in her concert in early 2020, is particularly straightforward about the aggressive judgment she has experienced as a celebrity: “Some people hate what I wear … Some people use it to shame others / Some people use it to shame me … If I wear what is comfortable, I am not a woman / If I shed the layers, I’m a slut … Is my value based only on your perception? / Or is your opinion of me not my responsibility?” When she wore baggy clothing to avoid others criticizing her body, Billie, by nature of being a woman, found her body a topic open to debate; when she changed her mind and wore revealing clothing, it was the same thing all over again. It’s unfortunate that, despite how clearly she speaks to the point, even this article can’t avoid mentioning it.

Depression and anxiety are now so rampant that they’ve become a cultural zeitgeist. According to a study published in 2019 by the Pew Research Center, American teenagers cite anxiety and depression as the biggest problems for their generation. A total of 96% of respondents called them either minor or major problems. And it’s not just teens: The majority of people living today suffer from mental health problems large and small. One of the greatest functions popular music can perform is to give shape to emotions that are otherwise difficult to express. Lucky for those people listening today, they have a body of accessible pop music they can look to that deals with grim, complex emotions. Many people, teenagers included, are indebted to that artist, who was born in 2001—the same year 9/11 happened.

Let’s return to the sad girl for a moment. The speaker or singer in her works is a far cry from the pure woman seen with Shakespeare’s Ophelia who faces a tragic end. The story the sad girl paints—at points despairing, at other times accusatory—is more a battle to reclaim her agency. It’s something that teenage girls are rarely allowed to have. While Lana Del Rey sought to romanticize a tragic woman trapped in an unhappy relationship and Lorde unleashed the ego of a young artist fed up with the shallow happiness glistening on the surface of pop music, Billie falls somewhere in between the two. She can be found bragging about being the “bad guy” in her relationship, or otherwise mocking herself for living out the “Male Fantasy” of missing her ex. She bore her gaze into the pop market when she decided to cover up her body with baggy clothes with evident scrutiny of the sexually objectification of teenagers. The music industry went absolutely wild over this genius girl; they praised her as the future, and crowned her. But in the end, the power to bestow that crown still lies within the industry. They’re always on the lookout for the next pop princess to place upon the throne. As though there’s only room for one pop princess to sit down at a time.

Billie has said she was a big fan of Justin Bieber when she was young, and that she thinks she only wanted to become famous so she could meet him. When the two finally managed to meet, Bieber hugged his young fan for a long time. Bieber was later seen to have tears in his eyes during a personal interview when he mentioned Billie, worrying about the difficulties she would face after achieving fame so suddenly and at such a young age. With the release of her new album this year, and following on the album’s title, Billie was frequently asked if she was happier than ever. She says she is. Although fame dictates that she live in the fast lane, hopefully Billie can grow up only as quickly as she wants to. Because her search for agency speaks to nearly everyone in her generation, we are likely to end up owing her more and more as she continues to grow.