Billie Eilish said she “lost all her friends” when she became famous as a teenager.
The Bad Guy singer, now 22, first got noticed with her song Ocean Eyes and then became world-famous at 17 with her album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?
In a chat with Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver on their Miss Me podcast, she said,
Advertisement “I lost all my friends when I got famous. All except one—my best friend Zoe, who I’ve known since I was two. She’s still my best friend, but she’s pretty much the only one who stayed. When I became famous, I couldn’t relate to anyone. It was really tough.”
When asked if she tried to reconnect with her friends after touring, Eilish said she did, but they didn’t reply.
“I tried, but I felt resentful. I was so young,” she shared. She realized on her 20th birthday that all her “friends” were actually her employees.
She added, “I remember looking around the room and realizing everyone there was someone I employed. They were all at least 15 years older than me.
“Then, one of my best friends, who worked with me, quit suddenly and stopped talking to me. That was the worst thing that happened to me. “I realized I might be alone for real.
“Since then, I’ve become very distant from my coworkers. I have a hard time being friendly with them because I’m scared of losing them and have a lot of abandonment issues,” the two-time Oscar winner admitted. “I would get into relationships and that person would be my only friend, even if I didn’t really want to be in that relationship. I felt like that was all I had.”
“Then I worked really hard on making friends, finding new friends, and reconnecting with old ones. About a year ago, I reconnected with a bunch of old friends, and now I have so many friends.”
Billie Eilish, who recently released her new album Hit Me Hard And Soft, shared that she cried at a Coachella afterparty in April because she was so happy to have found her friend group.
The Grammy winner said, “We got in the car and my friends asked, ‘What’s going on? Are you okay?’ I said I was fine… then I burst into tears.”
“They asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I said, ‘Guys, I have friends and I just love you all so much. It’s been so long since I’ve had friends.’ I cried… because I finally have friendship again.”
Billie Eilish has talked before about how fame and touring made her lose friends after her first album got super popular in 2019.
She said, “Being on tour, I saw how it goes. You leave, your friends are sad for a bit, then life moves on and they keep doing stuff. It’s like when someone dies. You have to keep going. You can’t be sad all the time.”
Source: US Magazine