Billie Eilish, Pop’s Edgiest Star

She sings in a smoky soprano about suicide fantasies and heartache (“Take me to the rooftop / I wanna see the world when I stop breathing, turnin’ blue,” she begins on Listen Before I Go). And with green-streaked hair and oversize outfits, she looks straight out of a Nickelodeon cartoon. Yet for all her deliberate outrageousness, Eilish is a fairly normal 18-year-old. She lives with her parents, who dutifully ride along with their daughter on tours. Her older brother, Finneas, is her musical collaborator, and they work out of a recording studio in the family’s Los Angeles home.

Eilish has been embraced by an industry that’s often celebrated young female stars for their conformity, not their rebelliousness. Her Grammy-winning song, Bad Guy, is a pulsating track on which she razzes people who act tough, and in August, she performed a new track called My Future at the Democratic National Convention: “You don’t need me to tell you things are a mess,” she said by way of introduction. Eilish also co-wrote and sang the theme for the James Bond film that’s scheduled to be released next year.