While most people would probably like to forget how blissfully ignorant and hopeful for the future they were in 2019, Billie Eilish, unfortunately, can't escape it.
In the fourth installment of Eilish’s annual “Time Capsule” video interview with Vanity Fair, the 18-year-old singer came face-to-face with her 2019 self as she reflected on the changes she's gone through a year later.
Since last year, she's gotten a dog named Shark, recorded the theme song to the latest Bond movie, gotten a secret tattoo, gained more confidence, penned and recorded 16 new songs, and, oh yeah — won five Grammys.
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But with all those personal and career achievements have come with a price. Eilish says she can't be in public anymore at all, a far cry from her 16-year-old self, who, in 2017, said she would get recognised maybe once a week. Eilish's overexposure has even led her to have a few intense moments on stage where she's completely dissociated from herself.
"For a while now I have been really having an identity crisis a little,” she said. “I think it was December. I did some radio show performance, and the entire show I felt like I was pretending to be Billie Eilish. I completely wasn't looking at myself as myself. I was just totally seeing it from not my own perspective and it was so weird. It happened multiple times at like award shows and stuff — I felt like a parody of myself.”
"I've felt better about it lately, but you forget that I'm literally 18," she continued. "It's funny that I'm expected to have found myself and stick with it. I'm trying different things out, I'm trying different ways of living and styles, and personalities, and hairstyles and clothing and shoes. And I'm just trying it all out because I'm like a growing fucking girl."
The pandemic has affected everyone in different ways — Eilish included, especially given the fact that this year has also seen her at her most famous yet. Luckily, there are other celebrities who can relate, and Eilish named a handful of big-name mentors like Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, and Lady Gaga, who have offered to talk or give her advice.
But for the most part, a lot of Eilish's reaction to her last-year self is very relatable. "Oh gosh, that did not age well," she said after hearing herself in 2019 say how she was looking forward to "changes" and "new beginnings" in 2020. "Girl, please. Talk about 'what's gonna change, what's gonna be different?' Your whole life will have gone [plane nosediving noise]."