Gen Z Influencers: Billie Eilish

This time, we don’t compromise: Billie Eilish is the real deal. An interplanetary success, the first singer born in the early 2000s to reach the number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, six nominations at the upcoming 2020 Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Song of the Year. And she has just turned 18.

[Updated 4/02/2020. Billie Eilish cleaned up at the 2020 Grammy Awards, winning five of the six awards she was nominated for, including the night’s four biggest prizes: Best New Artist, Song, Record and Album of the Year. On top of all that, her brother/producer, Finneas, picked up two awards himself: Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical (which he shared with Rob Kinelski); and Producer of the Year, Non-Classical].

On one hand, there’s talent and unstoppable creativity. Eilish started composing and singing with her brother, music producer and actor Finneas O’Connell, when she was 11. Her breakout success came at 13, when the pop ballad Ocean Eyes was released on various platforms, including Spotify, and introduced this young girl with icy eyes and an angelic yet powerful voice to the world.

On the other hand, there’s an entire generation waiting for their first true pop icon to come on the scene. Gen Z is becoming famous for refusing to stereotype and claiming a world devoid of the narrow categorizations of the past, when concepts such as user-generated content and video/music streaming platforms were nowhere to be found. In this quest to find a valid yet non-constructed reference point, Billie Eilish came into the picture.

Her winning attributes are there for everyone to see: unfiltered thoughts and anti-star, rebel attitude, blended with a strong knowledge of her art and great mastery of her voice. An unprecedented mix of forwardness, sometimes even childishness, and complete dedication to her career. Billie Eilish creates her own music with her own style, and the audience, especially Gen Z, can’t help but be enticed by her confidence in shaping her world while disregarding the tropes of young female singers.

Fluo-colored hair, tons of chains and nail art, no hint of implied seductiveness or girlishness. Baggy clothes that are an explicit anti-body shaming call (she stated that she doesn’t want to show her body so people won’t sexualize it or speculate on it). Eilish speaks up her mind, both with her words and with her appearance. She’s not afraid of standing out. No wonder she has become the symbol of a generation that responds to edginess and boldness more than all those that preceded it.

Still, Billie Eilish is a teenager, and she’s well aware of that. As she recently stated in the Same Interview, The Third Year Q&A with Vanity Fair, she’s grown up with the eyes of the world upon her, but that didn’t prevent her from undergoing the transformations every teen must face. One above all: the search for her identity. Quite a challenge, considering that her public image is deliberately disruptive and nonconformist.

Seeing Eilish repeating the same interview for three years in a row and commenting on her statements and attitudes of the past — with much embarrassed laughter — is like using a microscope to glance into the changes of a (larger-than-life) teenager: her exploding fame magnifies the self-doubts and hunger for clarity that many young adults experience.

Yet Eilish reaction to her rising stardom and under-the-spotlights adolescence may be exemplary of how her Gen Z peers now face the whole growing up thing.

Even if not exposed as she is, the majority of GenZedders is raised in a connected world where changes are as fast liking someone’s post, and where their public and private images may never even meet (Finsta VS Rinsta accounts, anyone?).

And what does Eilish demonstrate to them? That priorities, attitudes, even personality, can evolve rapidly year after year, but dreams and aspirations should not be swept away by crazy, pressing environments. “I’m not gonna tell myself to do something different next year. I’m just gonna do what I want next year” says the singer.

GenZedders love spontaneity and nonconformity, confidence and talent. Their 2020 doesn’t need singing icons that have stereotyped and safe personas. Characters such as the Spice Girls — so dear to Millennials, so well-defined in their roles and personalities that they even had their own distinctive colours and nicknames — are far too cumbersome for a generation that changes its identifications with the velocity and fluidity of a TikTok trend. They need people such as Billie Eilish, who can turn their rooms into a “scrappy studio” that makes their talents come out as groundbreaking hits such as Bad Guy.

If a final proof was needed that Eilish is THE Gen Z’s pop icon, here are the numbers: the 257k Instagram followers of 2017 became 40 million in 2019, and the Google searches for her name went from 1 million to 152 million in the same three years.

Billie Eilish is an erupting volcano that embodies the need for exploration, contamination, self-expression of Gen Z. She doesn’t do stuff because society tells her to. She does stuff because it’s cool. Her winning card, beside quirky looks and unapologetic attitudes, is spontaneity.

She is genuinely impressed and fangirls about the fact that her musical myths, such as Justin Bieber and Billie Joe Armstrong, are now attending her concerts and collaborating with her. She dreams about luxury cars — “You better have a Lamborghini!” is the advice she gives to the Billie from the future — but she also wishes to maintain her happiness. She has insecurities, she gets starstruck, she has high hopes and strong values. She may be super famous, but she never stops showing what being a real teen means.

Billie Eilish — Instagram Metrics

• Followers: 45.5 mln
• Average new followers per month: 3 mln
• Average likes per post: 6 mln
• Average comments per post: 59k
• Most liked photo of 2019 (what do you want from me): 10.5 mln likes

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This is part of YAD — Understanding Young Audiences Digest: a free monthly digest on young audiences for VOD and TV professionals. We’ve analysed millions of data points and we don’t mind sharing some of them — if this could help channels and commissioners to reach Gen Z, by understanding their needs, behavioural traits and intrinsic cultural values. 

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