Billie Eilish Reflects on Feeling ‘Not Grateful’ About Early Fame in New Interview

Happier Than Ever, the second studio album from Grammy winner Billie Eilish, won’t hit the world until late next month. Ahead of its release, however, fans have been given plenty to consume in the meantime, including a 27-minute Prime Day Show special and a just-dropped interview with Brittany Spanos.

The interview, a Rolling Stonecover feature boasting photos from Yana Yatsuk, sees Eilish reflecting on the When We All Fall Asleep era and opening up about the creative process behind the new album. Eilish also spoke candidly about the early difficulties of fame at this level, saying she was “very angry” during some of it.

“I was a kid and I wanted to do kid shit,” she said. “I didn’t want to be not able to fucking go to a store or the mall. I was very angry and not grateful about it.”

As for the When We All Fall Asleep era’s aesthetic, which has drawn imitators and joking impressionists alike, Eilish said such interpretations fall short of capturing who she really is.

“What do they think when they think that? Do they think what the internet thinks, which is whispering or whatever the fuck people say?” she said. “Anytime I see an impression on the internet, it just reminds me how little the internet knows about me. Like, I really don’t share shit. I have such a loud personality that makes people feel like they know everything about me and they literally don’t at all.”

Continuing, Eilish also offered a sound retort to anyone who’s ignorantly assessed her catalog thus far as having a lack of sonic diversity.

“Anytime I hear somebody say, ‘Oh, your songs sound the same,’ it gets me,” she told Spanos. “That’s one thing I really try hard to not do. I think the people that say that have literally only heard ‘Bad Guy’ and ‘Therefore I Am.’”

Eilish also discussed the realization that certain levels of fame mean not being able to give fans everything they want, her quarantine viewing habits, the “weird” experience of sending off the When We All Fall Asleep era at this year’s Grammys, going through “crazy shit” and personal trauma that helped inspire her latest songs, her hope that people “break up with their boyfriends” because of the new album, and much more.

Read the full piece here.

And below, catch a behind-the-scenes look at Eilish’s Prime Day Show performance, which is out now on Amazon: