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Billie Eilish may be one of music's biggest stars, but even she is not immune to being ghosted.
The 22-year-old American artist shared on the BBC podcast "Miss Me?" that she experienced "a crazy ghosting" last year, describing it as "insane."
For those unfamiliar, ghosting is when a friend or romantic prospect abruptly cuts off all communication without any explanation.
Eilish, known for her song "What Was I Made For," also discussed the difficulty of maintaining friendships when she first rose to fame.
Eilish was just 14 when she released her debut single "Ocean Eyes." Since then, she has achieved worldwide stardom and multiple awards. Speaking to Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver, Eilish said, "I've been ghosted for sure." She recounted the incident from last December, saying it was "literally unbelievable. To this day, [he] never texted me again." She added, "I was like, did you die? Did you literally die? It was somebody that I’d also known for years and had a plan, the day of, on the phone, making a plan, this is my address, be there at 3 pm—never heard from him again. Ever. I couldn’t believe it." Eilish later found out that he was dating someone else and remarked, "And I was like ‘oh’. But I didn’t know people still did that. I genuinely didn’t know people did that.”
Eilish's third studio album, "Hit Me Hard and Soft," was released last month. Earlier this year, she and her brother and collaborator Finneas O'Connell won the Oscar for Best Song with "What Was I Made For?" which they wrote for the Barbie soundtrack.
However, Eilish said that fame made it difficult for her to maintain friendships.
"Well, I lost all of my friends when I got famous," she said. "I suddenly was famous and I couldn’t relate to anybody. It was tough. It was really hard.” 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."
She recounted how one of those employees later quit unexpectedly and stopped talking to her.
"And it was the worst thing that happened to me. And that made me realize like ‘oh wait, this is a job.' If they left me they would never see me again." Since then, Eilish finds it challenging to be friendly with people she works with, "because I’m very freaked out by loss and I have a lot of abandonment problems," she said. Nonetheless, she has worked hard to make new friends and rekindle old friendships.
"Exactly a year ago, I reconnected with a bunch of old friends and now, I have so many friends,” she said. “I have a crew now! I could literally cry about it.
It’s been the greatest thing that’s happened to me." She shared how she recently went to a party at Coachella with her friends and 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 added that Allen’s track "Smile" inspired her to make 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.”
