the world pop icon will sing for the first time in Colombia

With her peculiar style of music full of multiple alternative nuances, the American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish is presented in this edition of Estéreo Picnic, one of the most influential and powerful young artists on the planet. He has just performed at Lollapalooza in Chile and Argentina and is coming to Colombia for more Latin audiences.

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Between shouts and ovations the Chilean people received the singer in her debut at Lollapalooza. ‘When We All fall Sleep. Where Do We Go!’they all shouted in unison as Billie swayed on stage surrounded by a gloomy theme that combined with her wild and rebellious style.

Red and white lights that constantly change luminance, building a visual impact similar to that of electronic concerts, gradually revealed the silhouette of the singer. She decided to use the single ‘Bury a friend’ to open her concert and no, it’s not a satanic ritual, it’s just the right style to represent the song’s theme: the perspective of the monster he keeps under his bed.

Emotion seized the visitors who, between rhymes, yelled “Mijita rica, mijita rica, la, la, la.” Billie replied that she didn’t know what she meant, but that she thought she was incredible. This happiness of meeting the world icon for the first time comes after the disappointment of 2020, when the singer had to cancel her ‘When We All fall Sleep. Where Do We Go’ through Latin America and the world because of the pandemic.

At the time, some fans complained that they could never meet the singer of great hits like ‘Bad guy’, ‘Lovely’ and ‘Therefore I Am’, however, after releasing her second studio album Billie announced the start and the dates of the world tour ‘Happier Than Ever’ with some destinations such as Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia.

“South America! I’ll see you in March! I can’t wait to play some festivals for you,” was the message that the singer dedicated to all the fans who couldn’t live the experience of meeting her. She already fulfilled the Argentines and Chileans, she now hopes to perform in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico.

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On this occasion, she wants to integrate into her presentations all the internal struggles she has had to endure in her new stage as a world icon, but she also seeks to expose the rebellion that has characterized her since she began her career.

This way of telling a story through music has been part of her life and is essential for her as a method of help, since she can be herself no matter what others think or say, as she explained in an interview. with ‘Vanity Fair’.

His story

She is the daughter of American actress Maggie Baird and musician and screenwriter Patrick O’Connell, who instilled in her and her brother Finneas a love of art.

At the age of 11, she was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome. and although this was not an impediment to advance in his artistic career, in an interview with Apple Music Her mother confessed that her obsession with Justin Bieber became worrying.

From a very young age, Billie dedicated herself to dancing until her teacher asked her to do a choreography with original music. His brother Finneas had a band and had written a single called ‘Ocean Eyes’, so he decided to lend the song to his sister who recorded it and uploaded it to SoundCloud.

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What started as a small project managed to have a great impact on audiences and In the first year alone, the single got more than 2 million views on Spotify, currently it has more than 400 million. For both her and her brother it was a complete surprise. “It’s a terrifying number,” Finneas said of the figure in an interview with Billboard.

At just 14 years old, Billie signed a contract with the record label Interscope Records and, together with her brother, produced her first EP ‘Don’t Smile at me’ in 2017, with which she obtained the gold record from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). ).

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Although for many this might seem like heaven, for Billie things were not going so well. In 2022 in an interview with Rolling Stone, the singer stated that I lived since I was 13 years old with depression and anxiety, after a hip injury forced her to quit dancing.

This pain was perceived in her first work and was involved in controversy because, at only 15 years old, the singer touched on themes such as obsession in ‘Hostage’, depression in ‘idontwannabeyouanymore’ and even the point of view of a psychopath in the single ‘Bellyache’. The British newspaper ‘The Guardian’ called her the “pop icon that defines adolescent anxiety in the 21st century”.

The way of expressing himself in his letters and the fashion references that he used helped him to create his own style that was recognizable to the world. Beginning with her baggy clothing, which is a protection mechanism against negative comments, and ending with her high-pitched voice with melancholic nuances embellished with truly depressing lyrics.

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In 2018, Billie began producing several singles for her first studio album ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’ A project that stood out for its electropop mix with little nuances of growing depressing madness, This was explained by the artist when she used her networks to express her hatred towards gender restrictions in the construction of albums.

With this work, she was positioned in the first place of the Billboard Hot 200, fourteen of her songs were on the Billboard Hot 100 list simultaneously and at only 18 years old she became the first woman to win all four general categories of the Grammys at the same time. day: Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist.

Despite her success, Eilish did not abandon the critical style of her songs. In this project, he delved into controversial issues such as climate change in ‘All the Good Girls Go to Hell’, the consumption of Xanax, an anxiety drug, in ‘Xanny’, and adolescent rebellion in the hit from this album ‘Bad Guy’.

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In 2021, she released her second album ‘Happier Than Ever’ with which the singer won another two Grammys for best recording of the year and best song written for visual media. That year, Billie became the youngest artist to win the triple crown of film music., which consists of obtaining an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Grammy. The achievement was obtained with “No time to Die” for the twenty-fifth James Bond film.

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In this latest album, Billie breaks with her unbridled style to show the latent need to move towards the future. This project, like the others, seeks to make visible the singer’s internal struggles, with the slight difference of appropriating a position that does not seek to be part of the problems and whose objective is to find and decipher the reasons for these. This is how Rolling Stone magazine described this piece of music.

Despite this permanent melancholy in her musical productions, in a recent interview with Vanity Fair magazine, the singer confessed that she had never felt as good as she does now and the most important thing today is “to be in touch with herself” and in how you really feel Unlike other years where her biggest problems were anxiety and depression, Billie herself commented that she is more concerned with making friends and learning not to hold grudges.

JOHN DAVID CANO

School of Multimedia Journalism EL TIEMPO

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