Billie Eilish was brought into the spotlight in 2016 at just 14 years old. She went to bed a simple home-schooled dancer and woke up the next morning to one of her Soundcloud uploads, “Ocean Eyes,” having gone viral. She released the music video correlating to the song soon after, and while it was only supposed to be a reference for her dance teacher, the video has now racked up over 71 million views.
Now, on Feb. 26, the 19-year-old has dropped a documentary, The World’s a Little Blurry, directed by Emmy winner R.J Cutler.
The two-hour and thirty-minute film, available on Apple TV+, delves into Eilish’s progression from sudden overnight sensation to performing at Coachella. The documentary displays the intimate details regarding her art and is an overall collection of composed memories that construct the different phases of her life: personal, career and more.
Audiences are drawn to her through her ways of defying “convention and genre” with her music, music video imagery and performances. In the documentary, viewers get to hear not just what Eilish’s music means to her but how she gets through the process of creating her work as well.
A large part of her creative process, and who she is today, is thanks to her family. Eilish’s film traces all the way back to when she was 17 years old and displays how even as she has grown, she is still very close to her parents.
Her close relationship between her and her co-writer/producer/brother, Finneas O’Connell, is also displayed through more than just what an average day in the studio is like, but also the memory of the two recording some of her earlier music in their childhood home.
As Eilish is the main name many are used to hearing, the documentary gives us a closer look into the style of the two when it comes to their creative process together.
The documentary does not just emphasize her younger age, though, but rather how new everything about her fame was and still can be. Further, how Eilish’s sudden jump to fame at such a young age, with no previous work in showbusiness or Hollywood, was a double-edged sword in a way.
Everyone is incredibly critical of their work, but when you have collected “more than 15 billion combined streams,” it is not just yourself who is identifying every mistake within your creations.
The documentary conveys the message that we are all human: you can win eleven Grammys but still think your work “sounds bad, and [that you aren’t] good,” Eilish stated about herself at one point in the documentary.
Through shots of Eilish explaining why she prefers to sleep in her parents’ bed, her relationship problems with now ex-boyfriend Brandon Quention Adams, and the problems she faces when trying to write her fully authentic thoughts into her music but questioning if it will come back to bite her once she gets older (with her views potentially changing) the documentary supplies the audience with a clear view of what the singer’s life is truly composed of.
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