Despite the fact that Billie Eilish is only 24 years old, she’s accomplished quite a lot over the course of her career …to put it mildly. The young icon has already snagged two Oscars, two Golden Globe Awards and 10 Grammy Awards — and that’s just naming a few of her many music-related accomplishments. Granted, the star might never have been a singer at all if it hadn’t been for a life-changing injury.
A Hip Injury Led to a Major Change for Billie
It’s hard to imagine the super-talented Eilish being anything other than the singer we know and love, and yet, that wasn’t always her goal. Instead, when she was younger, she wanted to be a professional dancer.
The star opened up about this particular fact during a chat on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast on Tuesday, May 5.
Talking about an incident that happened years ago while she was rehearsing for her first dance competition, Eilish explained, “I ha[d] a solo in each combo. I was so excited.”
“We were done with rehearsal,” she recalled. “We were about to leave. And our teacher was like, ‘Wait, let’s do one more just to film it.’ And so we did one more, And we filmed it, and in the middle of my little twerk — literally 12 years old — my hip is like [pops out], and I got injured.”
Eilish remembers that after the injury, she was “lying on the floor,” not able to dance or even walk.
“Definitely couldn’t do anything and was basically like bedridden for at least a week, and then I was on crutches, and I literally never danced again,” she said.
The Situation Led to an Unexpected Twist of Fate
Although Eilish’s dreams of being a professional dancer may have vanished when she suffered the hip injury, she wasn’t done expressing her creative side.
Indeed, Eilish and her brother/collaborator Finneas, had recorded a song together, “Ocean Eyes,” for her dance teacher who had asked for something that she could use. The siblings put the tune on SoundCloud, not expecting much to come of it.
Eilish explained on the podcast, “We only put it on SoundCloud to send an easier link to the dance teacher. And so we did.”
“And then that week I was getting ready for competition and then a week later Finneas called me, and he was like, ‘Billy, ‘Ocean Eyes’ has 1,000 streams, 1,000!'” she recalled. “And we were cheering and we were screaming and I was like, ‘This is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.’”
From there, things really took off. Eilish noted, “That week, I went to all these meetings in my crutches. Met with InterScope [Records], I met with all these different booking agents, I had my crutches, and I was so sad.”
Eilish may have been feeling blue at the time; however, now, she has a different perspective on her injury, saying, “When you think something is ruining your life, and it’s really actually saving your life.”
