‘I was completely unstoppable’: Billie Eilish on fame, learning from her Barbie song, protecting Olivia Rodrigo and her blonde and brunette phases

Pop superstar Billie Eilish reveals how early success in her career and the self-worth it brought her contributed to her hit Barbie song ‘What Was I Made For?’

She shares her worries about Olivia Rodrigo, why she dyed her hair black after going blonde and brunette, and her thoughts on Kurt Cobain’s 1994 suicide note

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Pop superstar Billie Eilish attends the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She reveals how her success and sense of self-worth contributed to her hit Barbie song “What Was I Made For?”. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 6:15pm, 8 Dec 2023

“This is kind of dark,” Billie Eilish says, “but recently I was reading Kurt Cobain’s suicide note.”

The 21-year-old pop superstar is snuggled on a sofa at a Los Angeles studio – black trousers, black and red hair – and sets down the acai bowl in her hands to explain.

“It’s horrifying. I mean, all of it is the most tragic s*** I’ve ever heard. He was such a pure person and talent,” she says of the late Nirvana frontman, “and I feel so much deep, deep, deep sorrow for him and his life and where it went.

“In the letter he’s like, ‘I have everything in the world, and I absolutely hate it.’ He was so ashamed that he wasn’t enjoying it. And I get why he was feeling that way,” she adds. “It’s just not what you think it’s going to be.”

Kurt Cobain of Nirvana during the taping of an MTV Unplugged show in New York in 1993, a year before his death. Photo: Getty Images

Eilish did not wake up this morning burning with the desire to complain about being a world-famous celebrity, which is what she has been since her 2019 debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, went quadruple-platinum and made her the youngest person in history to sweep the Grammy Awards’ four major categories in a single night.

But the singer is describing the emotional circumstances that shaped her single, “What Was I Made For?,” in which she sings about having forgotten how to be happy over the saddest-sounding piano chords in the world.