The Eilish factor

 

The best marketing is the one that is not perceived as such. And Billie Eilish pretty much exemplifies that: at the tender age of 19, she has grown to become perhaps the most important artist of her generation (at least this decade). And she’s only released one full length album so far, announcing the next one with a single song, the aptly name “Your Power”. But that was enough for:

• her getting a ton of acclaim for her work, including 7 Grammy awards, 2 Music American awards and a Brit Award (again, with 1 album!). Oh, and reaching the #1 spot on the charts in just about every country on earth back in 2019 with her spectacular debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
• her literally breaking the record for fastest photo to reach 1 million likes on Instagram: that was a few weeks ago, when the artist revealed that she was now… blonde. That single piece of news (based on a rather scrappy photograph, might we add) was enough to eclipse all the carefully shot selfies of a Kim Kardashian and all her fellow celebrity influencers… what do you know!
• her making the news again last week when she announced that her long awaited second album would indeed be arriving soon (July: soon enough), would be called Happier Than Ever and came with the interesting artwork of a — blonde — crying Eilish… That’s when we got to discover “Your Power”, a delicate piece of composing with the help of her (also brilliant) brother/producer Finneas. Once again, the singer managed to subtly break expectations, with an interestingly frank take on things, while never being either outrageous or blunt about any of it… and that worked:
• her — finally — making the cover of Vogue UK in clothes that we hadn’t really seen her wear before: significantly more glamour than her usual tomboy-style outfits, although not nearly as revealing as what most other pop stars around are seen wearing every other day (see: Lady Gaga, for one). But, because Eilish managed to cultivate such an authentic image, that, once again, strikes a chord…

In the end, what makes Billie Eilish stand out so much is that she is unapologetically… honest. That’s right: she says more or less what she wants (and what she wants happens to be rather interesting), she wears more or less what she wants (and changes when she feels like it), she does the music that she has in mind with her brother as main collaborator… All things we wouldn’t necessarily associate with a mainstream pop star. Yet, because she does not care about any sort of label, and focuses only on coming up with the very best material she can think of, in the most authentic packaging that she can, she keeps hitting a bull’s eye… Keep going, Miss Eilish!