16-year-old musician Billie Eilish is to perform her single Bellyache on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, March 22.
Bellyache has been written from the perspective of a conflicted psychopath. The dark, gritty pop song—described by the BBC in 2017 as the “pop equivalent of a Tarantino movie”—features on her critically-acclaimed debut EP Don’t Smile at Me.
Currently on her sold out Where’s My Mind North American tour, Billie Eilish has proven to be a formidable talent since signing with Interscope Records. Following her performance at this year’s South by South West (SXSW) festival, Billie Eilish was listed in The New York Times’ Acts that Stood Out coverage. “This 16-year-old singer has a misty, sleepy voice that can take on a jazzy quaver—part Lana Del Rey, part Amy Winehouse. Onstage, there was absolutely nothing complaisant about her. As her band played folk-pop tinged with some hip-hop bitterness, Ms. Eilish strolled, slouched and crooned with precisely gauged insolence and nonchalance.”
Bellyache has also featured the latest Music Issue in The New York Times magazine’s 25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music is Going. The piece describes Billie Eilish’s music as “otherworldly”, saying that “our culture demands that young girls crave validation, but Eilish and her cast of characters feel no such thing. There are no apologies in her songs about the disappointments of love—only poetic quips about potential lovers tripping over knives or the subject of a song remorselessly burning the car of an ex-flame.”
Last month saw Ocean Eyes, another track from the highly applauded EP, officially certified with the RIAA GOLD in North America. The EP has, at the time of writing, surpassed more than 300,000,000 streams globally, proving the young star to be a musical phenomenon—and the artist shows no sign of stopping.
Catch Billie Eilish’s performance on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday March 22 at 11:35pm/10:35pm CT.