Billie Eilish’s 10 most popular songs of all time

67th Annual GRAMMY Awards - Red Carpet - Source: Getty
67th Annual GRAMMY Awards - Red Carpet - Source: Getty

Billie Eilish's rise as a songwriter is less about triumph than a path in vulnerability that can be a source of strength within the pop genre. Rather than trend-chasing or radio-friendly formulas, Billie Eilish claimed some territory, writing from the inside out with introspection and emotional depth at the forefront.

Billie's phrasing, so usually wrapped up in surrealism or realism, is testimony to a mind well aware and heavily feeling.

Performers, for the most part, pretty much simply present the world with the tied-up, make-up version of themself initially, but Eilish always presents listeners with the first draft instead: plain, thoughtful, and sweetly muddled.

Eilish has cemented her reputation as a musician, offering music that is as experimentally sound as it is ruthlessly laid bare. Songs such as Bad Guy demonstrate her fearless imagination and genre-hopping edge, and Happier Than Ever surprises them with its emotional intensity and lyrical ferocity.

Billie Eilish at the 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards - Show - Source: Getty
Billie Eilish at the 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards - Show - Source: Getty

Billie Eilish's otherworldly ballads, such as When the Party's Over and the crawling, menacing Bury A Friend, demonstrate how restraint and vulnerability can be most powerful. Every drop is a testament to her ingenuity, showing that Billie Eilish doesn't simply create hits, she creates moments.

Let's move to the core of Billie Eilish's music, where experimentation and vulnerability come together in an intimate yet global fashion. She has a strange skill for transforming raw emotion into sonic energy, leveraging minimalist production to heighten the gravity of her lyrics.

Billie Eilish's songs succeed because they are so unflinchingly honest. Her capacity for rich emotion conveyed in simple but memorable melodies is what makes her songcraft so engaging and memorable.


Here are the 10 most popular Billie Eilish songs

Billie Eilish has taken the world by storm with her extraterrestrial melodies and unbridled words, producing some of her generation's biggest hits. Starting with her breakout singles and continuing through her chart-topping anthems, every song reflects her uniqueness of introspection and fearless imagination. Below are ten of her most-streamed songs, each evidence of her growing artistry.

Disclaimer: This article contains the writer's opinion. Reader's discretion is advised!

1) Bad Guy

Bad Guy Billie Eilish ( Via YouTube/ @BillieEilish)
Bad Guy Billie Eilish ( Via YouTube/ @BillieEilish)

Billie Eilish's Bad Guy is a radical statement of her own artistic vision and deviation from mainstream pop conventions. On her first album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? The song wastes no time grabbing our attention with its sparse bassline and Billie's distinctive breathy singing.

What is so engaging about this song is its deconstruction of pop norms. Billie Eilish is defying gender roles in a playful but defiant setting. Her brother Finneas's production makes this work well, piling up close beats with subtle, interesting sound effects that build a claustrophobic tension.

The offbeat flourishes, such as the pedestrian crossing clip and Billie Eilish's restrained giggles, bring offbeat charm to the song that makes Bad Guy a genre-bending, unforgettable hit.


2) Lovely

Released in April 2018 and subsequently added to the deluxe edition of Billie Eilish's Don't Smile At Me EP, her duet with Khalid was a turning point in her journey to stardom. The song was soon a fan favorite, cementing Billie's position within the music industry.

The song, Lovely has been complimented by critics on its hauntingly lovely production, which Rolling Stone's Jon Blistein describes as a "smoldering ballad" and The Times' Raisa Bruner says features melancholy tones. Minimal piano and ghostly string arrangements provide an atmospheric background that gives weight to the emotional intensity of the song.

youtube-cover

Billie Eilish and Khalid's voices over it provide depth to the words. Their duet is a potent expression of vulnerability and shared loss.

With more than 3 billion streams on Spotify and a 7x Platinum certification in the US, the song's success cannot be denied. The video, in which both singers are trapped in a glass box, visually captures the feeling of isolation and shared sorrow.

Billie Eilish and Khalid collectively captured the spirit of teen sadness, clearly registering with the audience, especially via their connection to 13 Reasons Why's second season. The record's capacity to blend raw emotion with breathtakingly minimalist production made it a hymn of silent sorrow and strength.


3) Your Power

Billie Eilish's Your Power is likely her most emotionally uneasy and theme-packed song, offering a subtly brutal criticism of manipulation and abuse. Cut down to hardly more than an acoustic guitar and her unnerving vocals, the song welcomes listeners into a close unease, urging them to endure its message.

Your Power by Billie Eilish (Via YpuTube/ @BillieEilish)
Your Power by Billie Eilish (Via YpuTube/ @BillieEilish)

The simplistic melody of the song only serves to underscore the anguish in the lyrics that denounce the misuse of power, particularly in the entertainment industry. Visually, the snake imagery employed as a metaphor for the music video, where a massive serpent winds its way around Billie Eilish, more and more accentuates the strangling effect of unevenness in power.

With its raw emotion and unflinching attitude, Your Power was a number-one hit, but its controversy cemented Eilish's voice as not just an artist but as a frank writer grappling with the darker truths of her own universe.


4) Ocean Eyes

Eilish's rise to fame started slowly but forcefully with the song Ocean Eyes, which would go on to be one of the definitive moments in contemporary pop. The ethereal ballad was never meant to spark a worldwide career. Finneas wrote it, and it was just going to be a dance recital tune for Billie Eilish.

But when the siblings released it on SoundCloud in 2015, its beauty of atmosphere and emotional purity started to resonate far beyond their imagination. The haunting gentleness of the song and Billie's sweet vocals resonated with audiences, and ultimately, music industry executives, leading to a record contract with Darkroom and Interscope in 2016.

youtube-cover

A sibling project evolved into an international phenomenon, now certified multi-platinum and streamed more than a billion times. Its low-key music video, plain but feeling-packed, moored the song's atmosphere without frills, demonstrating that authenticity occasionally makes the biggest noise.


5) What Was I Made For

Billie's What Was I Made For wasn't written for a studio album of hers, a song specifically crafted for Greta Gerwig's Barbie film soundtrack in collaboration with her brother Finneas. While written for a movie based on a doll as the inspiration, the song ventures so much more, hiding identities and emotional intent that resonated far beyond the scope of the big screen.

What I Was Made For (YouTube? @BillieEilish)
What I Was Made For (YouTube? @BillieEilish)

With its minimalist piano accompaniment and bare, muted vocals, the song gets a quiet, tear-jerking introspection that is universal to all human beings. It's an old-school music video, combined with the emotional weight of the song, that won Billie and Finneas the Golden Globe for Best Original Song in 2024.


6) Therefore I Am

Therefore I Am was a highlight of Billie Eilish's career, a moment where her tone became harder, her attitude more brazen, and her message more incisive than ever. Sequestered between the revolutionary force of her first album and the sophistication of her sophomore effort Happier Than Ever, this song demonstrated a Billie who was no longer just responding to fame but redefining the terms of how she interacts with it.

Therefore I Am Billie Eilish (YouTube/ @BillieEilish)
Therefore I Am Billie Eilish (YouTube/ @BillieEilish)

Sparse production supported by a thudding bassline and minimal beats allows her sardonic, snarky lyrics to slice like a hot knife through butter. With a title that refers to Descartes' immortal phrase for philosophic contemplation, the song turns deep contemplation on its head and presents a sassy, backhanded salute of defiance to the media and glare of the spotlight.

Instead of allowing others' thoughts to get the best of her, Billie turns the tables, cool, calm, and very much in command. And its effect? Unwavering. The song topped the charts, its stripped-down beat and bratty attitude demonstrating that Billie wasn't merely coasting through fame; she was commanding it.


7) Male Fantasy

On her second album, Happier Than Ever, Billie Eilish finishes off with a restrained but blistering song that reduces everything to its emotional bare minimum. Male Fantasy isn't an attempt to impress. Instead, it demobilizes.

youtube-cover

On acoustic guitar and little else, she strips naked in discomfort at media representations of intimacy before turning inward and confronting memories of past relationships and the way lines between fact and fantasy get crossed. It's not just a song, it's a confession that disassembles slowly. In this one, Eilish doesn't scream her growth; she breathes it, and it lands all the more.


8) No Time To Die

Few artists can bridge the gap between tradition and novelty as Billie Eilish bridged one with her Bond theme song. Rather than taking the lead from past Bond themes, Billie imagined what one might look like from where she stood soothing, haunting, and intensely mellow.

No Time To Die By Billie Eilish (YouTube/ @BillieEilish)
No Time To Die By Billie Eilish (YouTube/ @BillieEilish)

No Time To Die doesn't yell danger. It whimpers heartbreak and betrayal, being closer to the emotional core of the character than the action-hero face of the franchise. Orchestral flourishes from Hans Zimmer and production that takes cues from Finneas. The track slowly builds up and lets Billie's subtle delivery take center stage.

It wasn't just a bold reinterpretation. It was proof that vulnerability could be as powerful as bluster, catapulting the song to the head of the Oscars and Golden Globes.


9) Lunch

Lunch is a significant shift in tempo on Eilish's musical trajectory, bringing a more developed and mature sound in the direction of subtle alt-R&B influence while maintaining the dark atmosphere she has fostered.

Whereas she'd used thickly layered synths and bass-heavy production in her older work, this song is more natural in its construction, pairing piano, strings, and a light hand with vocal effects to highlight the rawness in her voice.

Lunch By Billie Eilish (YouTube/ @BillieEilish)
Lunch By Billie Eilish (YouTube/ @BillieEilish)

The lyrics shift into close, inner space, bringing queer desire into dialogue with a new openness. While it's still early days with its release, the emotional delivery of the song and the crescendo bridge indicate that the song can become a career-defining track for her.


10) Everything I Wanted

Everything I Wanted turned out to be one of Billie Eilish's biggest hits, citing the subjects of fame, depression, and the incredibly strong relationship between her and brother Finneas.

Drawn from a graphic nightmare vision of her own death, Billie braved early resistance from Finneas to pen this very personal song. The music video, which Billie herself directed, has a symbolic sequence where she drives a car into the ocean with Finneas, symbolizing their unbeatable bond.

Everything I Wanted bt Billie Eilish (YouTube/ @BillieEilish)
Everything I Wanted bt Billie Eilish (YouTube/ @BillieEilish)

In 2021, the song earned Billie her second back-to-back Grammy for Record of the Year.


Billie Eilish's music speaks strongly to listeners because of its raw emotion, innovative production, and honest discussion of universal and personal themes. In mournful ballads and rallying anthems, her music combines vulnerability and strength elegantly, and every track is a fiercely personal experience.

Whether it's fame or identity, Billie's music always challenges and gets listeners to consider their own emotions. Her ability to express so many feelings in such a simple yet effective melody cemented her as the voice of absolute authority in music today.


Keep reading SoapCentral for more informative content!

Also Read: The evolution of Sabrina Carpenter: A look at her music career

Edited by Debanjana