How do you achieve over one billion Spotify streams, headline status at Coachella, and millions of instagram followers at only age seventeen? Meet music’s new icon, Billie Eilish. Billie Eilish has gone from a homeschooled girl recording tunes on Soundcloud from her bedroom floor to one of the biggest artists in the current music world. It turns out that there is a design to this method of achieving fame, or the design that has rendered Billie so successful at such a young age. First, Billie defies the world’s expectations of what a pop star is or should be. Her design decisions as an artist are to release song that cover several different kinds of moods/vibes/genres, so as to represent that a pop star does not need to be completely uniform (or on-trend) with everything he or she does. This renders her own personal brand as something more fluid rather than concrete, and almost everyone can find something about her or her music to relate to. Second, Billie’s fashion sense definitely turns heads, and signifies a new era of popstars which focus more on comfortable street-style rather than extravagant, expensive, and rather inaccessible looks. Billie rocks oversized sweatshirts and sweatpants – something everyone can wear and enjoy, and demonstrates a more relatable kind of icon; a celebrity who does not isolate him/herself based on their sense of fashion. Lastly, Billie has utilized her young age to her advantage, in the sense that at only 17-years-old, she can entirely relate to teenagers around the globe who listen to her music. She openly discusses her friendships, feelings, mood swings, etc., which captures the eyes and hearts of her fans, feeling as if there is suddenly someone in the music industry with whom they actually have things in common. Overall, Billie Eilish’s quick and extraordinary rise to fame is a well designed method based around straying from norms, creating a universal persona, and rendering her (as an artist) extremely relatable to the people who love her work.
