by Kate Kinloch

In 2019, the hit song Bad Guy captured the attention of radio stations, its infectious thumping beat providing the anthem to parties and gym workouts alike. Not to mention, its success contributed to the artist’s 5-time Grammy win in 2020, leading Eilish to become the youngest solo artist in history to win the ceremony’s prestigious awards. It is fair to say, at the ripe age of 19, Miss Billie Eilish is doing just fine.

With 52 million Spotify monthly listeners and only one album and one EP to her name, Eilish has dominated the mainstream music industry in recent years. She has become ubiquitous within every facet of modern pop culture, from her unconventional music sound to her passionate activism and social media presence, and in recent years Billie has amassed a fanbase that extends well beyond mere teenage listeners. So where does she write and record all her smash hits? The answer: a bedroom in her family home with her 24-year-old brother-producer, Finneas.

Billie Eilish was a star even before 2019. Her song Ocean eyes thrust the then 13-year-old Eilish onto the music scene overnight when she uploaded it onto Soundcloud. Ocean eyes was originally created for her dance teacher, who wanted to choreograph a routine to it. Ever since then, Billie Eilish has contributed to redefining what pop means today and destabilising generational assumptions around ‘bubble gum’ teen pop synonymous with the early 2010s. Her music is hard to define: a fusion of electropop, hip hop, alternative indie, and jazz bound together with delicate, dark vocals and singing, biting lyrics.

Billie Eilish’s documentary, released on Apple TV on February 26th, offers an honest look into her rapid rise into international stardom while not shying away from conversations about self-doubt, relationships and anxiety. What ‘The World’s a Little Blurry’ captures so well is how Eilish – who still lives in her family home with her parents – is uninterested in compromising the intensely personal relationship she has with her listeners for the currency of success. Eilish says, “the least I can do, is make art that I make, cause I have the same problems [as my fans]”. This is evident in her lyrics. The lyrics in her gentle ballads are heartbreakingly relevant, and the sonic imagery she creates maps on to our generation’s experiences: Listen before I go discusses suicidal thoughts, Xanny covers drug addiction amongst teenagers, and I love You paints a narrative of a thorned, love-struck relationship.

‘The World’s a Little Blurry’ illuminates how conscious Eilish is in prioritising her sincere relationship with fans, who she dreamily describes as “part of her”. She shares a reciprocal and familiar relationship with them, treating them as long-lost friends. Footage shows her running to fans clustered outside concert venues, hugging them through fences and catching up with them at her meet and greets. In one scene, Eilish halts a performance following a fan injury in the pit. She tells the crowd, “Hey, you guys need to be okay. Cause y’all are the reason I’m okay. Okay?”

*“My favourite thing during a festival is looking at the crowd and they’re not looking at me [they’re looking at the visuals]. I love that”*

For Eilish, the visuals – music videos, her performance’s audio-visual projections, stage, and lighting design - are just as vital as the soundscape the music itself creates. In the documentary, Eilish, flicking through a journal filled with Tim Burton-esque ghoulish drawings, explains to the camera how she “draws her songs”. She stresses that she is unable to manifest what goes on in her head and therefore, drawing allows her the freedom to translate her visions onto a page. On stage, the striking visuals combine with her affecting track vocals to generate the ultimate Eilish experience. The nightmarish depictions of different worlds in her music videos and live performances make listening to her music more a global-sensory, rather than purely auditory experience.

The documentary highlights the dance in the music industry between an artist’s creative agency and chart success. Finneas admits to their mother, Maggie Baird, in their kitchen: “I’ve been told to write a hit, but I’ve been told to not tell Billie that we have to write a hit”. Eilish mentions that she dreads the song-writing process and prefers just to sing the songs. “You can’t trick her into writing a song”, Maggie responds from behind the camera. Finneas takes an operational but supportive role in helping his sister through the songwriting process and onstage performances. Their fraternal relationship facilitates an empathetic and spontaneous collaborative process where Finneas’ mixing and instrumental talents enable him to vivify the artistic innovations that Billie and he imagine.

Eilish has famously flipped a big middle finger to industry expectations of her through her music, funky hair colours and baggy fashion sense. Billie has actively resisted the music industry's demands to produce chart triumphs throughout her career and doesn’t hesitate in taking control of her sound and image. The documentary shows Billie conceptualising her choreographed music videos in a scene where she films her mother, as if it were her, in their garden. From behind her camera, Eilish gives a directorial commentary, mapping out choreography and how she wants to frame shots. This video, demonstrating her visual ideas for the When the Party’s over music video, would be sent to the director with Eilish asking him to not stray too much from this exact vision. After wrapping the official filming of When the Party’s over, Eilish says to her mother, “for the next, rest of the videos, I’m directing them all myself”. Perhaps, stemming from a creative frustration in communicating her vision to someone else, she does exactly what she says she would. Later, we see behind-the-scenes footage of Billie making her directorial debut for Xanny.

*“Ew, I don’t wanna go. That shit’s too much pressure. I don’t like pressure.”*

The morning of her Coachella performance, cradling her knees on the outside steps of her family home, an on-edge Billie speaks openly to the camera. She voices her anticipation and dread - from nerves and (as we learn later) an acute awareness of her internet persona which seems to invite online hate. Eilish confesses that she does not enjoy the pressure: specifically, pressure from crowd expectations of her performances and pressure on herself.

It’s during moments like this that the documentary reminds us that the star conquering the charts and selling out stadiums is still a teenager. It shows that, like every other teenager in the country, Eilish falls prey to symptoms of adolescence: self-deprivation, extreme self-criticism, falling in love and heartbreak with a distant boyfriend ‘Q’, sullen clashes with parents and vulnerable moments, exhaustion and stress of touring. ‘The World’s a Little Blurry’ achieves what I believe it sets out to do: celebrate Billie as an artist but lay bare the teenager behind that celebrity. She is the same age as most of her listeners: a 19-year-old catapulted into the constellation of stardom and success. The documentary interweaves the extraordinary achievements of her career with her home life: headlining festivals, writing a Bond theme, and breaking Grammy history, to passing her driving test and leaning on her parents and friends for emotional support. Eilish does not seem capable of having a dishonest moment and, ‘The World’s a Little Blurry’ verifies that.

The documentary also relays to viewers the physical demand on Eilish’s body - countless physio appointments and muscle tape on her legs due to her explosive performances and jumping around furiously on stage. Alongside that, the exhausting task of coping with her Tourettes. Perhaps it should dedicate more time to exploring the emotional strain and expectations of how young artists cope within the industry. One moment, Billie’s mother sensitively asks the camera, “I honestly don’t know how any artist, of any age, with this kind of trajectory, is doing this without a parent… someone who loves you.” Later, when Maggie questions Billie if she ever felt that she wanted to jump off the roof after listening to the dark lyrical content of Listen before I go, Billie nods. The documentary gives a flavour of the grittiness of the emotional turmoil but never fully subscribes to it. ‘The World’s a Little Blurry’ threads ideas of a young person grappling with fame into the documentary’s fabric but leans more into how Eilish makes and performs her music.

With a running time of 2 hours 20 minutes, the documentary feels overpacked in some areas – it overindulges in a Justin Bieber storyline which shows Bieber go from Billie’s childhood love to collaborator on her song “Bad Guy”. It is very sweet, but I feel that it did not need to be elaborated to the extent it was.

Criticisms aside, ‘The World’s a Little Blurry’ tears down the mystique built around Billie Eilish’s image in the media with dark lyrics and unsettling music video imagery, and what it uncovers is an incredibly ambitious and creative artist with a long career ahead of her.

Rating: 3.5/5

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