What did Billie Eilish study? Singer's early life explored

Billie Eilish, the iconic singer-songwriter who won an Oscar this year for her Barbie track -What Was I Made For? - has become a sensation among music lovers all over the world, with most of her singles hitting Billboard's Hot 100 as soon as they're released.

Eilish first started writing songs at the age of 11 and created the track that brought her fame and recognition when she was merely 16. The Bad Boy singer was featured in the Times 100 list in 2021 and continues to be an inspiration for countless budding musicians.

Not many people know this, but Billie Eilish didn't go to any conventional school. Instead, she was home-schooled by her parents alongside her older brother, Finneas. It was during their homeschooling that the siblings developed a love for music and songwriting.

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Billie Eilish and her brother were homeschooled by their parents

Billie Eilish with Finneas O'Connell At The 92nd Annual Academy Awards (Image via Getty/Kevork Djansezian)

Billie Eilish was born to parents Patrick O'Connell and Maggie Baird in 2001, four years after the couple had Finneas. Both Maggie and Patrick were struggling actors at the time, with Baird having taken up a teaching job on the side. The couple were also musicians.

Eilish's parents were also deeply inspired by Hanson - a pop band from the 90s made up of a group of home-schooled brothers from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Drawing from this inspiration, the couple decided to home-school their own children, Billie and Finneas as a way of getting to spend more time with them.

The purpose of home-schooling was also to encourage the siblings to find and pursue their passions beyond the limitations of the traditional education system. For their love of music, the couple also filled their house with instruments.

Growing up, Billie Eilish experimented with horse riding, dancing, singing, and acting. As a child, she would regularly create movies, stage for photo shoots, write, and perform music. As a result, the Bad Boy singer learned to play the ukulele at six and started performing at talent shows at eight.

Soon, Eilish joined the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, after which she regularly started singing in choirs. According to TeachRock, Maggie Baird shared a rule that everyone in the family adhered to, saying:

"We had a kind of rule in the house that no one would ever make you go to sleep if you were playing music - music trumped everything."

As a teacher herself, Maggie also gave her Billie and Finneas songwriting classes at home. Eilish wrote her first-ever song for one of these classes; the song was inspired by The Walking Dead and talked about a zombie apocalypse.

Billie Eilish was also passionate about dancing and took various dance classes at the Revolution Dance Center with her brother for four years.

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Billie Eilish had originally recorded Ocean Eyes for her dance company

Ocean Eyes, which marked Billie Eilish's first step to the path of stardom in the music industry, was created out of her passion for dancing. In 2015, when Finneas and Eilish were taking dance classes at the Revolution Dance Center, her tutor, Fred Diaz, asked her if she could write a song for choreographing the next dance, to which the singer agreed.

Upon discussing it with her brother, Finneas gave her Ocean Eyes, which he had originally written for his band but thought would suit Eilish's vocals better. The siblings then recorded the song and uploaded it on SoundCloud so that Diaz could access it, and it achieved overnight success.

In November 2016, Billie Eilish re-released the track commercially, and it later became the lead single of her debut EP, Don't Smile At Me. Sharing the story behind Ocean Eyes in a 2017 interview with Teen Vogue, Eilish said:

"[Finneas] taught me the song and we sang it together along to his guitar and I loved it - it was stuck in me head for weeks. We put it on SoundCloud with a free download link so my dance teacher could access it. We had no intentions for it, really."

The Ocean Eyes singer is awaiting her third studio album - Hit Me Hard and Soft. Eilish has already released the tracklist of the upcoming album and mentioned in her post how she and Finneas "could not be more proud of this album. Hit Me Hard and Soft will be released on May 17.