Influencer Editorial Team
Even as one of the biggest stars in music, Billie Eilish is not immune to the sting of being ghosted. The 22-year-old American artist shared on a podcast called Miss Me? that she experienced a “crazy ghosting” last year, describing it as “insane.”
For those unfamiliar, ghosting is when a friend or romantic interest abruptly cuts off all communication without any explanation. The What Was I Made For singer revealed that maintaining friendships became challenging when she first gained fame.
Eilish released her debut single, Ocean Eyes, at just 14 years old, and since then, her rise to stardom has been meteoric, with numerous awards to her name. Speaking with Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver, Eilish admitted, “I’ve been ghosted for sure.”
She recounted the incident from last December, still incredulous: “To this day, [he] never texted me again. I was like, did you die? Did you literally die?” She explained that it was someone she had known for years, and they had made plans on the phone for that day. “This is my address, be there at 3pm – never heard from him again. Ever. I couldn’t believe it.”
Eilish later discovered that he was dating someone else, which added to her disbelief. “But I didn’t know people still did that. I genuinely didn’t know people did that.”
Her third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, was released last month. Earlier this year, Eilish and her brother and collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, won an Oscar for Best Song with What Was I Made For?, which they wrote for the Barbie soundtrack.
Despite her professional success, Eilish said fame made it difficult to maintain friendships. “Well I lost all of my friends when I got famous. I suddenly was famous and I couldn’t relate to anybody. It was tough. It was really hard.”
She mentioned that her best friend, Zoe, remained by her side, but her only other friends were her employees. “And then it was my 20th birthday and I remember looking around the room and it was only people that I employ. And all 15 years or more older than me.”
One of those employees subsequently quit and stopped talking to her, which was a significant blow. “And it was the worst thing that happened to me. And that made me realise like ‘oh wait, this is a job’. If they left me they would never see me again.”
This experience has made Eilish wary of getting too close to people she works with, due to her fears of loss and abandonment. “I’m very freaked out by loss and I have a lot of abandonment problems,” she admitted.
However, she has been making strides in building new friendships and rekindling old ones. “Exactly a year ago, I reconnected with a bunch of old friends and now, I have so many friends. I have a crew now! I could literally cry about it. It’s been the greatest thing that’s happened to me.”
She recounted a recent emotional moment at a party with her friends at Coachella, where she burst into tears. “I was like, ‘Guys, I have friends and I just love you guys so much, and it’s been so long since I’ve had friends.’ I cried… and it’s literally because I actually have friendship now again.”
Eilish shared that Lily Allen’s track Smile had inspired her to seek out new friends. In the 2006 song, Allen sings, “But with a little help from my friends / I found the light in the tunnel at the end.”
“I used to want to cry hearing that line because I didn’t feel that way, because I didn’t have friends,” Eilish said. “And I remember thinking I want to feel that way. And I want to listen to this song that I relate to in every way and hear that line about friends and be like, my friends got me through it.” (
