It's sometimes hard to remember that Billie Eilish is simply a 17-year-old kid. That can happen when an artist has the No. 1 song in the country, a debut album that debuted at No. 1 as well, and is performing all over the world.
But it's true. She might be nominated for a remarkable 10 Moonmen at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, held on Monday, Aug. 26 at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ of all places, but she's still just a kid who is discovering herself, quite literally, on the world's largest stage. And as much as she's become the voice of Gen Z, whenever she uses that voice in interviews, she reminds us of just how relatable she is.
Take, for instance, the way the newly-legal driver spoke about her first car, a totally down-to-earth Dodge Challenger she nicknamed the Dragon. "Look at her fine ass," she told Rolling Stone earlier this month. "I love this car so much." (Of course, less relatable is the fact that it was a 17th birthday gift from her label.)
And when she took the magazine's intrepid reporter for a ride in the Dragon, she told them, "I'm trying so hard not to speed right now. It's mainly because my mom is up there." Like we said, relatable.
While we wait to find out just how many Moonmen she'll walk away with on Monday, let's take a look at Billie's 10 most relatable moments.
"I can't lie, the internet can be a great source to educate yourself. It's how many people learn stuff, and I think that's good, for the most part. I've learned things I was completely ignorant of, and I hope that everybody can be more open-minded about educating themselves and learning how to do things differently," she told Vogue in August. "Can it also drag you down and make you feel horrible? Of course. But there's a lot that's really necessary and that needs to be seen which otherwise wouldn't be."
"It's hard to feel hope in a time that seems so utterly hopeless. I have good days and bad," she told Vogue. "But I am inspired by the fact that people are coming together and doing so much to make a change. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we're in those times—intensely—right now. I wouldn't want any other generation to take all of this on. This is the exact generation I want handling this."
"Shout-out to Britney, too...she posted a couple of videos to my songs and I almost pooped my pants," she said during an episode of me & dad radio after Britney Spears shared videos of her dancing to "bury a friend" and "bad guy." "So, I love you, Britney."
"I saw comments like, 'How dare she talk about not wanting to be sexualized and wear this?!'" she recalled to Daze when discussing the internet's response to photos she posted in a bathing suit. "It was trending. There were comments like, 'I don't like her anymore because as soon as she turns 18 she's a whore.' Like, dude. I can't win."
"When people ask me what I'd say to somebody looking for advice on mental health, the only thing I can say is patience," she told Vogue. "I had patience with myself. I didn't take that last step. I waited. Things fade."
"So while I feel your stares, your disapproval or your sighs of relief, if I lived by them, I'd never be able to move," she said in a video clip played during the kickoff concert fort her Where Do We Go? World Tour. "Would you like me to be smaller? Weaker? Softer? Taller? Would you like me to be quiet? Do my shoulders provoke you? Does my chest? Am I my stomach? My hips? The body I was born with, is it not what you wanted? If what I wear is comfortable, I am not a woman. If I shed the layers, I am a slut. Though you've never seen my body, you still judge it and judge me for it. Why?"
"I used to read every single comment and every picture I was tagged in and respond to every single DM, but now I barely go on Instagram because I can't handle that shit," she told NME in January. "F--k that shit. I just don't wanna see all the horrible things people say. I don't wanna see that I should have died instead of this artist. It takes not looking at my phone to stop myself from engaging. I had to delete Twitter in March because of it. Nobody is going to win. If somebody said something to me in person, I'd beat their ass."
"This industry is f--king horrible, but if I wasn't doing this I would probably be miserable because this is always what I've wanted," she told NME. "No matter how horrible fame is and how horrible this and that is: a lot of things make all of this worth it, y'know?"
"I went on, like, two auditions," she told Rolling Stone in August. "So lame. This creepy, cold room. All these kids that looked exactly the same. Most actor kids are psychopaths."
"We can't have this be the rest of our lives. We were talking about it the other day, we're just like, 'I'm 17, dude.' I can't have my life exactly like this forever, and he can't either," she told Beats 1's Zane Lowe in April, noting that her brother Finneas O'Connell just bought a house with his girlfriend and got a dog. "It's a weird balance, because I want to grow in my life, and grow up and have a life. But I already have my career. ... Having been on tour, I know how it works. I know that you leave and it's a little bit of your friends being sad. Then, you're gone for long enough that life moves on and they keep doing things. It's the same way as if someone dies. You have to keep going. You shouldn't be mourning them every two seconds for the rest of your life. You have to keep going."
"I've spoken a lot to female artists about this, because if you're not a female artist you probably don't think about this," she told NME. "If I was a guy and I was wearing these baggy clothes, nobody would bat an eye. There's people out there saying, 'Dress like a girl for once! Wear tight clothes you'd be much prettier and your career would be so much better!' No it wouldn't. It literally would not."'
"I want to be able to mourn, I don't want to be shamed for it," she told UK outlet the Independent in April regarding the reaction to her feelings following XXXTentacion's murder in 2018. "I don't think I deserve getting hate for loving someone that passed."
"When I wake up, I put on The Office. If I'm making a burrito, I turn on The Office," she told Elle in March. "I need the distraction so I don't think. It's like therapy for me. I have way too much to think about and people [I don't want] to disappoint."
"I don't really believe in advice," she told Billie Joe Armstrong for a Rolling Stone piece. "Sometimes when I'm given advice, I do the opposite. It's just how I've been my whole life. Nobody has ever been through exactly what you're going through, ever."
"When older people say, 'What do you know about things like love?', I know more about it than you do because I'm feeling it for the first time right now, whereas you haven't felt that for a long time," she told NME. "That doesn't mean it is any less powerful, but it is definitely a different feeling. They're used to love, heartbreak, pain and just wanting to f--king die, but for a younger person that's all new to you and it's terrifying."
"Bro, teenagers know more about the country that we're living in right now than anybody," she told NME. "The world is ending and I honestly don't understand the law that says you have to be older to vote, because they're going to die soon and we'll have to deal with it. That doesn't make any sense to me. But to see young people taking part in peaceful protests and not obeying is beautiful."
To see how the 2019 MTV VMAs shake out for Billie and all the other artists nominated, be sure to tune in to this year's ceremony when it airs live on Monday, Aug. 26 at 8 p.m. only on MTV.