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Billie Eilish · S1 E1
The O'Connells
Actor-musician parents, homeschooled in Highland Park, a house where creativity was the only rule
Highland Park, Los Angeles, 2005. A four-year-old Billie Eilish sits cross-legged on the living room floor while her mother teaches her older brother a songwriting lesson at the kitchen table, and she absorbs every word without anyone noticing.
"everything i wanted" (Billie Eilish, 2020). A song about her brother Finneas, a dream, and the only person who understood what was happening to her. This is the relationship that built everything. Before the Grammys, before the fame, before the bedroom studio, there was this family.
The House on the Hill
Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell is born on December 18, 2001 in Los Angeles to two working actors who can barely pay rent. Her mother Maggie Baird has small roles in shows like The X-Files and Friends; her father Patrick O'Connell does the same. They live in a tiny two-bedroom house in Highland Park, a neighborhood that hasn't gentrified yet, and they make one unconventional decision: homeschool both kids.
Sources
Rolling Stone
Vogue
Apple TV+ documentary
“My mom would cook and she'd be like, "How much goes into this?" And that's how we learned.”
— Billie Eilish
everything i wanted, Billie Eilish (2020)
Finneas produced this track with barely anything: a muted synth pulse, soft bass, and his sister's voice layered into a choir of one. The song is built on negative space, what's missing matters more than what's there. Listen for the second verse, where Billie describes Finneas pulling her back from the edge. The whole thing sounds like a conversation whispered in the dark between two people who share a wall.
Sources
Pitchfork
Rolling Stone
TAP TO REVEAL: What was the O'Connell family's one house rule?
Highland Park, Los Angeles
The northeast LA neighborhood where the O'Connell family lived in a tiny two-bedroom house, and where Billie and Finneas would later record a Grammy-winning album in a childhood bedroom.
The O'Connell Household
my future, Billie Eilish
From Happier Than Ever (2021). "I'm in love with my future, can't wait to meet her." For a kid raised in a house where unfinished projects were the only sin, this song is the payoff. The girl sitting cross-legged on the living room floor is already on her way.
my future, Billie Eilish (2020)
The song starts as a whispered ballad and blooms into jazz-inflected pop halfway through. The lyrics are a letter to a version of herself that doesn't exist yet, written by someone who was raised to believe she would.
What was Billie Eilish's mother's creative career before teaching her children at home?
In the bedroom next door, a teenage Finneas O'Connell is teaching himself Logic Pro and writing songs that sound nothing like what's on the radio. Next: the brother who becomes the producer, the co-writer, and the other half of everything Billie Eilish will ever make.
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