In an interview with Pitchfork, Billie Eilish shared a moment that sums up her upbringing. She is discussing math, not standardized tests or quadratic equations, but measuring ingredients in a kitchen with her mother and determining how the numbers change when a recipe is doubled. She remarked, almost casually, “I learned math by cooking with my mom,” as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. And perhaps it was for her.
There was never a school hallway where Billie Eilish was. She never sat through a lunch period she didn’t want to and never raised her hand in class. She was born in Los Angeles in December 2001, and her mother, Maggie Baird, an actress, teacher, and musician, homeschooled her and her older brother Finneas O’Connell. Maggie deliberately chose to give her children freedom and time rather than rigid schedules and curricula. One of the most decorated musicians in Grammy history was born out of that decision, which must have seemed unusual to many at the time. The irony in that is difficult to ignore.
It’s not really about education at all in the Billie Eilish education story. It’s about what happens when a child is free to pursue their curiosity without being interrupted by a bell. She started playing the ukulele at age six. She had joined the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus at the age of eight. She composed her first original song for her mother’s songwriting class at the age of eleven, drawing inspiration from The Walking Dead. After homework, these weren’t extracurricular activities. They served as the curriculum.
Finneas, who would later co-write and produce almost all of Billie’s recordings, had a clear idea of what homeschooling meant to him. He defined it as being liberated from the social pressure to compare oneself to others in an early interview. “I’m not at a high school where I have to base my self-worth off what other people think of me,” he stated. Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of the entire narrative is that psychological freedom, which is rarely mentioned when discussing Billie Eilish’s ascent. There’s a feeling that when creativity isn’t continuously assessed, it thrives, especially the unvarnished and unguarded kind for which Billie became renowned.
Both siblings were encouraged by their parents, Patrick O’Connell and Maggie Baird, to pursue their passions in acting, dancing, and the arts. Billie worked on crowd scenes for movies, went to acting auditions, and danced so seriously that she had to quit when she was fifteen due to a growth plate injury. It was that sudden, excruciating injury that completely changed her focus to music. The path can occasionally be seen in a sideways direction.
When she was thirteen in 2015, she and Finneas were recording in his bedroom. Finneas wrote “Ocean Eyes” and uploaded it to SoundCloud almost as an afterthought. It quickly gained popularity. In two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have listened. Labels are observing. A machine is starting to rotate. Additionally, there was no teacher keeping an eye on her attendance and no principal’s office to report to during it all. Just a brother who thought the songs had value, a girl, and a microphone.
What came next is by now well known: two Academy Awards, a Grammy sweep at eighteen, a debut album that topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and records that haven’t been surpassed. Her song “Birds of a Feather” became the most streamed single by a female artist on Spotify by 2024. Since talent rarely has a clear origin story, it’s still unclear if any one factor accounts for all of that. However, the piece about education keeps coming up, tacitly persistent.
Maggie Baird herself taught her kids the fundamentals of songwriting. Billie’s early music videos were edited by her. She was touring. She was present in the space. Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of an already peculiar tale is that the boundaries between mother, teacher, and collaborator never truly solidified into distinct entities. Industry shapes the majority of pop stars. Family and a type of education that trusted her to determine what she needed shaped Billie Eilish.
The world might have discovered her in any case, by some other means. However, the door she truly entered was left open by parents who thought that a child who is allowed to be inquisitive will discover her own path to greatness.
