Billie Eilish is first LGBTQ+ music star to hit major Spotify milestone
Billie Eilish is the first LGBTQ+ artist to hit a major Spotify milestone. (Getty/Unsplash)
“Birds of a Feather” singer Billie Eilish has proved that she truly is The Greatest, becoming the first queer singer to hit a huge Spotify milestone.
At the age of just 22, Eilish is the first LGBTQ+ music superstar to surpass 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
She’s also just the third artist overall to hit the landmark, and the youngest.
Eilish, who released her chart-topping third studio album Hit Me Hard and Soft last month, follows just behind Taylor Swift, who has 102 million listeners.
In at number one is “Blinding Lights” singer The Weeknd, who boasts an impressive 107 million listeners every month.
Though Eilish trails just behind the two artists, it’s far more impressive for the “Chihiro” singer to have reached the streaming milestone, considering her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was released just five years ago.
She also has half the number of songs on Spotify compared to both Swift and The Weeknd; both are also 12 years older than Eilish.
Eilish currently has eight songs on the streaming platform with more than one billion listens, including her huge breakthrough hit “Bad Guy”, and 2019’s “Everything I Wanted”.
The two-time Oscar winner, who came out as LGBTQ+ last year, is the only queer artist to surpass 100 million listeners on Spotify.
Since coming out, the musician has released her hit single “Lunch” which is essentially about sapphic oral sex.
Interestingly, Billie Eilish has previously explained that she wrote “Lunch” before even experiencing sex with a woman, but the song helped her to realise that she “wanted her face in a vagina”.
“That song was actually part of what helped me become who I am, to be real,” Eilish told Rolling Stone earlier this year.
“I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after. I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand — until, last year, I realised I wanted my face in a vagina.”
