Eilish Constance is a 17 year-old folktronica enigma. Despite her youth, she has been producing original music for years now, dropping her first albums — two of them — at age 14. Lately, she has been making waves in the tastemaker scene, working with producers such as apob, touring with Acopia, and getting nods from electroclash wunderkid 2hollis. On a Friday morning, she explained to me that songwriting is her coping mechanism, a mediation between her mind and the world as it unfolds.
There’s a sense of magic to her music which takes a new form with each song: the pure sophistication of her lyrics, which unravel their story like pulling thread, couple with the raw emotions of her experience so seamlessly, almost devastatingly. The melody — which she admits she doesn’t like to follow, often re-stringing her guitar so that there is novelty within each production — beats like a dove’s heart, one you can scoop up with scraped palms and look at, cry over, then lay back down on the earth.
I picture myself in a red bloody gown.
What does that mean?
You’re wearing a smile I haven’t seen in a while
But I’m leaving. (“1 plus 1”)
At least, that’s what I felt when listening. While the instruments fall soft and timorous — balanced with anodic strings — her velvet words cut like a knife, her voice floats like a memory from down the hallway. It leaves you looking over your shoulder to find you are in the shallows of yourself.
When I asked her what her process was for this songwriting, she shrugged. “I come up with it as I go.” She was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping out of a black mug, with her mom beside her. The two were shoulder-to-shoulder. Her chunky rings caught the blurry sun rays behind her.
I was the one to choke and
Let him get away
I had broken your token
Now there’s no arcade (“Token”)
On her early musical influences, Eilish shared the essentials: Nirvana, Radiohead, the Beatles. “I knew all their songs and I dressed up as John Lennon for Halloween when I was 10.” As she grew, she related more to Billie Eilish, also a young musician. Because she discovered Billie with her brother, the music was made even more personal. Today, she rocks to ear, Jonah Paz, and Tommy Fleece.
They told me a little of her story, the beginning. At four years old, Eilish (pronounced Ay-lish) picked up the ukulele, and since then, the world has never been the same. Growing up with visual artists as parents, she was the first of her family to become a musician, writing and performing her premiere original song in the third grade: “If I Were Made of Dreams” which can be heard on her album, LUCKY (2024). The feeling of being on the stage, the connection formed between her and the audience, the exhilaration of expression all planted the seed for her stardom.
The pursuit continued for years after that fated elementary showcase. During quarantine, she made music on her iPad, put it out on Soundcloud, and immediately garnered an audience. It was no secret that she has a gift. “I had people who supported me and pushed me to be better.” Today, she pulls 6 to 7 studio hours a week while still enrolled part-time at school.
So what do you call a man like that?
I call it a heart-attack.
I call it a heart-attack.
So what do you wonder this man could do?
He’d probably dull my spark.
He’d probably pull me apart. (“man like that”)
She explained her recent singles “Token” as an ode to an ex, and “1 plus 1” as a story to herself, an exploration. Her newest track “Tethered” recounts the easy magic of experience led by the heart.
“It’s actually a really beautiful story. I was playing a festival at the Echo called ‘And Always Forever,’ and toward the end of the night I was dancing on Sweet 93’s stage, scanning the crowd. I noticed this tall boy smoking a cigarette who kept staring at me, so I jumped off stage, walked over, took his cigarette, pulled him up to the stage, and kissed him.
“We ended up hanging out every weekend for about a month before eventually growing apart, but he was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. I wrote “Tethered” right after with the producer, Tommy English. We spent the whole day in the studio writing it. It came together really naturally.”
Her artistry doesn’t end at the music. The music videos for her recent singles “Token” and “Your Funeral” — both directed by Jacob Ortega — frame her prairie dress-and-barrette style with eerie stills, fighting boys, stretching hills upon a cold horizon. All the while, she sings a heartwrenching story of love gone wrong, or a brother struggling with addiction. One of her unreleased songs features an MV of selfies intermittently posted over bodycam footage.
In response to what, exactly, her experience is like to invoke her art, she gave me a half-smile. “This may be an inappropriate example, but it’s like being on acid.” Her knees were tucked under her baggy shirt, morning sun poured through the window behind her. “Like, colors are brighter, feelings are stronger. I feel very deeply.”
I spoke at your funeral. We smoked on the way back home.
Now the car smells. And my smile’s gone.
Get me out of here. We have a cowardly connection, dear.
We throw our fists up in the air each year.
You always seem to smile ear to ear. (“Your funeral”)
When asked how she envisions her musical future, Eilish looks forward to what is blooming alongside her.
“My main goal in music has always been to get as big as I can. As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve started to understand the consequences of fame like that. Still, I’d love to reach that level, and I’m sure I’ll find a way to love every part of it.”
“If I don’t get there, I’d still like to be a Grammy winner. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if I’m famous. What matters is that I make myself happy with music and connect with real, emotional people who feel the same way I do.”
Such connection is effortless for Eilish and her audience. Her lyrics recount the embodied experience of artistic union, and its varied evolution: sometimes subversion, or slow builds embedded in a woozy composition, or direct lyrics that shoot for the source. Its exact occurrence is determined by the particular soul it speaks to.
What’s true is with each story, Eilish whispers deeper into the well that is her charming, sorrowful sound. Its echoes will surely reverberate as this starlet reaches for the sky.