Billie Eilish has spent her teenage years in the spotlight, and because her star rose so quickly she never really had time to reflect on how fame affected her. That is, until COVID-19 shut the world down.

During a recent interview with LA Times, the 19-year-old opened up about her displeasure with early fame and how the pandemic helped her self-reflect on its affect on her.

“I hated going outside. I hated going to events. I hated being recognized. I hated the internet having a bunch of eyes on me. I just wanted to be doing teenager s***,” she confessed before explaining how the pandemic gave her time to “do the self-reflection I've never had the time for” and to focus on how early fame "affected me — how I actually feel about it all instead of just doing it.”

"People that don’t have our lives have no idea how hard it is. It’s f***ing horrible," she continued. "But you have to be respectful of people that have so much less than you and be mindful of your privilege and be polite, I guess.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Eilish opened up about her struggles with reacting to negative comments made on her social media platforms. The singer admitted that she can't even read comments anymore “because otherwise I will spiral out, and s***’s mean as f***. There are some people, like my brother, who can get a text from someone he doesn’t like and delete it immediately. He won’t even read it. I can’t do that. If Satan himself texted me, I’d be, like, ‘What did he say?’"

“I want to hear what people have to say, and also, because I’ve grown up on the internet, I mostly agree with a lot of what the internet says," Eilish added. "Some of the things that they make fun of people for are funny because they’re kinda true, right? Which then worries me because I’m like, ‘Oh, God, are the mean things [about me] actually true? And what are they?’ I want to know them! But I don’t want to know them, because what is that going to do for me? Nothing.”

Eilish is performing at this year's iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas in September alongside a lineup of superstar artists. Fans across the country can tune in and watch an exclusive live stream of the show via The CW App and CWTV.com. Then, on October 2nd and 3rd, relive all of the epic performances from the weekend during a televised special on The CW Network at 8 p.m. ET/PT. And leading up to the official television special, The CW will also air an hour-long Best Of Special on Sunday, September 29th at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

Jon Manuel

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