Billie Eilish’s debut album continues to break records

By Hayley Thompson
June 9, 2019

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Seventeen-year-old Billie Eilish released her debut album in late March of this year. It was produced entirely at home by Billie and her 21-year-old brother. Within the first week of its release, Billboard reported that the album accumulated 313,000 album units in the United States alone. A few months later, the No. 1 album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? has broken records all around the world.

During the first week of June, Billie Eilish’s debut album has returned back to No. 1 on the Billboard top 200 albums chart for the third time.

The very young indie-pop singer’s first album has broken many records around the world including the most hot 100 hits at one time among women in the U.S. and the youngest female solo act in the UK chart history to debut at No. 1. Billie Eilish’s debut album also broke Apple Music’s record for the most users pre-adding an upcoming album. The album earned over 800,000 pre-adds before its March 29 release date.

The album cover for When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Photo by Interscope Records

Billie Eilish first began getting recognition for her music when she uploaded the song “Ocean Eyes” to SoundCloud at the young age of just 13. The song went viral after 24 hours.

According to an interview with Elle Magazine, Los Angeles-born Eilish was homeschooled her entire life. She told Elle that being homeschooled gave her the time to actually realize what she wanted to do very early on. Music was never just a hobby for her.

Billie Eilish mysteriously captured both a very haunted and heartfelt feel in the album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?The very haunting album cover is just a glimpse of how dark but beautiful her lyrics, vocals and music videos really are. Billie’s very different and seamlessly calculated music style has captured the eyes of many music lovers around the world.

Billie Eilish is a very visual person and has been open about not only having Tourette’s syndrome but synesthesia as well.  Synesthesia is a neurological condition that results in an unrelated sense being activated at the same time as one’s normal senses. Psychology Today explains that an example of synesthesia may be sensing swirls, textures or patterns of colors when hearing music.

According to Eilish, each song on “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” has its own color, texture and feel. In an interview with iHeartRadio, Eilish explains that with everything she makes, she is already thinking about what color, texture, smell, number, shape and even what day of the week it is.

Eilish intensely captures these specific essences in each song and in each song’s music video. To celebrate the album’s release, she created multiple rooms with each look, smell and feel that her songs embody to give her fans a better idea of how she sees things.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvn_w6NFQWf/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Combining each very thought-out sensory detail with the haunting yet beautiful words and imagery is one of the reasons why Billie Eilish is continuing to stand out and break records.

Eilish spoke with NPR about her very intense music videos, saying that she really enjoys glorifying people’s fears. “People are freaked out by needles, people are freaked out about things under the bed and people are really afraid of the dark… I just really wanted something that’s going to kind of make you jump a little bit.”

Billie Eilish’s music video for the single “You Should See Me in a Crown” features spiders crawling all over her face with a huge tarantula coming out of her mouth. It was all very real. Eilish told NPR that it is very important to her that everything is real, rather than using computer generated images.

Young music star Billie Eilish has been very successful after her debut album acquired record-breaking sales. Her passion and sensory thinking help make a new, glorified sound that stands out in an artistic way.

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Hayley Thompson

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