Billie Eilish

When an unknown Billie Eilish put her 14-year-old voice to some lyrics strung together by her older brother back in 2015, a stunning tidal wave of rave reviews and life-changing reactions quickly followed, catapulting the talented teen to the front of the line of industry-changing superstars. A lover of singing and dancing growing up in Southern California, Eilish was asked by her dance instructor to write and record a song that he could choreograph a routine around for an upcoming recital. When Finneas, her high school band-playing brother, handed over "Ocean Eyes" because he thought it would be a good fit for his sister, he proved to be spot on. Her magical voice melted into the life-changing words and produced a musical masterpiece still marveled about and cherished all these years later. Eilish recorded the three-minute and twenty-second song with her brother's helping hand at the family home, and they plopped it on the streaming platform SoundCloud for her dance teacher to check out. By the following day, he wasn't the only one who was listening to it, loving it, and sharing it, as it had gone viral. A music discovery website that sifts through thousands of uploads searching for talented works came across it, took a liking to it, and fueled an already-growing interest by sharing it. Amid the flurry of fans flocking to check it out and listening to it again and again, the youngster's inbox was filling up with admiring, flattering, and inquiring emails. Attention-grabbing and transformative, the song propelled Eilish past all the obstacles and career-crushing rejections that tend to pile up on the hopes and dreams of wannabe singers and songwriters looking to gain entrance into the hard-to-crack music industry. It also turned all-important heads in the fancy high-rise offices of music executives, leading to crucial connections and meetings. These are all boxes that young singers with hopes of heading down the path to fame, fortune, and a career of entertaining crowds of fans around the world must check, and Eilish was doing so remarkably quickly. Before she blew out the candles on her 15th birthday cake, she was already trending toward superstardom with a manager and a publicist in tow and a rapidly ballooning fan base that was beginning to push streaming numbers into the stratosphere. Plus, she had already struck gold by scribbling her name on a deal with Darkroom/Interscope Records, a moment every teenager who has ever stood on a stage, held a microphone, and sang a lyric dreams of doing.