It was a 13-year-old that first told me about Billie Eilish. I think she’s just an extraordinary talent, I really do. We only get that once in a generation.
I met her last year. She came here to take part in the Brits, and she’d just done the James Bond thing and the Oscars and won all these Grammys – quite extraordinary. I found it very interesting meeting her mother. Billie and her brother Finneas had been homeschooled. We’re not very used to that in the UK, not many people do it. It’s much more usual in California, and Billie’s mother went into quite a lot of detail about how they brought up their children to go to symphony concerts, and really used the city of L.A. to expose their children to all this culture. They’re not pushy, stage mother kind of people – they said, well, we let them concentrate on things that they love doing, because they were probably going to be good at that. Which is absolutely true!
One of the things we talked about when I interviewed her was [body shaming]. She said she wears the clothes she wears in order not to sexualise herself. She said: I do that for me. I’m not telling people what to do, I’m saying to them: do what you want! And if you want to dress like me, fine, but if you want to wear more sexualising clothes, that’s fine as well. Don’t do as I do. It made me think of Life Of Brian [laughs]. She’s made a great statement in doing that. A whole generation of young girls have now been inspired by her.
The day that I interviewed her, she also went on Nick Grimshaw’s show on Radio 1. They did a special – they wanted it to be just teenage girls, 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds. This girl phoned up… Billie Eilish says yes, I was 11 or 12, when the hormones kicked in, and I hated everything. And I thought: that’s it! She can connect with people of 12, 13, 14. Now she’s 18, and she’s mixing with all the great stars of the world and all that, but she’s not forgotten that connection, and in a way, she’d make a great broadcaster – because that is what it’s about, it’s about connecting with people, and she’s absolutely a natural at doing that. It came out just in that moment of radio, and I thought, that’s what she’s doing; apart from her musical talent and lyrics and making videos and what she wears, she connects with her audience. That is why they love her, and quite right.
