Billie Eilish receives BRIT Billion Award for huge streaming landmark

30 August, 2023

Billie Eilish performs on Day 1 of Leeds Festival 2023 at Bramham Park on August 25, 2023 in Leeds, England. Credit: Matthew Baker/Getty

Billie Eilish has become the latest artist to receive a BRIT Billion Award by the BPI.

The BRIT Billion award celebrates Eilish surpassing the landmark of one billion career UK streams – as calculated by the Official Charts Company. Her Grammy Award-winning hit  ‘Bad Guy’ has over 300million UK streams, while six of her other tracks top 100million U.K. streams.

At 17, Eilish became the youngest female artist in UK chart history to score a Number One album with her debut ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’. This week, the pop singer lands her second Number One hit on the Official UK Singles Chart this week with ‘What Was I Made For?’ from ‘Barbie: The Album’. Her first UK Number One was ‘No Time To Die’ from the James Bond film of the same name.

The singer also won three BRIT Awards in three consecutive years for ‘International Female Solo Artist’ (2020, 2021) and ‘International Artist of the Year’ (2022). Eilish recently became the youngest artist to top the bills at  Reading & Leeds festival just last week (August 25-27).

The first wave of 13 artists to receive the BRIT Billion award included global icons ABBA, Coldplay, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, pioneering rap and hip-hop artists AJ Tracey and Headie One, and chart-dominating pop artists and singer-songwriters Anne-Marie, Ellie Goulding, George Ezra, Lewis Capaldi, RAYE, Rita Ora and Sam Smith.

Recent recipients include Lana Del Rey, who was presented with the award backstage at her BST Hyde Park headline show and Olivia Rodrigo, who became the youngest person ever to receive the BRIT Billion Award at just 20-years-old.

In other news, Eilish recently played an intimate live show in London and paused the set multiple times to help fans who were struggling in the crowd.

The first instance came during the third track of her 20-song setlist, ‘Therefore I Am’, when Eilish paused twice mid-performance to check on members of the crowd and urge members of security to pass out water.

“Can we get some water for these folks?” she asked, looking around for members of staff to help the eager audience. “Like where is security? Am I security now?”

The artist notably invited both Boygenius and Labrinth onto the stage for a collaboration.

At the Sunday set at Reading 2023, NME gave Eilish four stars for her closing performance at the three-day event, describing the performance as one that “cements [her] place as a festival legend”.

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