Billie Eilish Doesn't Know if There Will Ever Be Another Billie Eilish

Nearly a decade ago, Billie Eilish, past 13 years old, enactment “Ocean Eyes” connected SoundCloud and catapulted to planetary superstardom.

It was the benignant of ascent aspiring singers imagination of, propelled by a level that astatine the clip wasn’t known for unearthing popular stars. But if you inquire her now, adjacent Eilish, present 24, doesn’t cognize if idiosyncratic other could replicate her success. “Oh my god!” she says erstwhile asked wherever the adjacent Billie Eilish mightiness beryllium discovered. “I person nary idea.”

These days it’s communal for caller artists to stock their euphony connected SoundCloud, but backmost past it was inactive comparatively new. “I’m precise funny to spot what the aboriginal holds,” Eilish says. “I don’t cognize wherever the adjacent whoever is gonna travel from. I can’t hold to spot them and I can’t hold to cheerleader them, whoever it whitethorn be.”

If they ever come. Ten years agone artists could physique followings, similar Eilish did, done livestreams, Instagram posts, and videos connected societal media. In 2026, the scenery looks precise different. Everyone seems to know, oregon claims to know, however to bushed the algorithms to get streams and views, but precise small of it feels authentic, particularly successful a satellite afloat of AI slop. Eilish and her fans grew up online, but they whitethorn not privation to bent retired determination the mode they erstwhile did.

Eilish, to beryllium clear, inactive believes existent endowment tin interruption done the noise. Art, she says, should beryllium “attainable for everyone” and the internet, portion messy, enables that. “There’s each sorts of technologies present wherever it seems similar we’re each doomed, but we’re not,” Eilish tells WIRED. “If we support making existent stuff, existent creation made by humans—live music, unrecorded audiences—I don’t spot that ever dying.”