In a move that should surprise no one, Billie Eilish has been announced as a performer at the 2020 Grammy Awards, the singer announced in the dead of night on Twitter. She is nominated for six awards atround her debut full-length album, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?,” including Best New Artist; as part of that total, the album’s song “Bad Guy” is up for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance. Eilish was also Variety’s 2019 Hitmaker of the Year.
While Lizzo can rightfully be proud of being the 2020 Grammy Awards top nominee with eight nods, in a certain sense, Billie Eilish’s family — the 17-year-old singer and her brother and musical collaborator Finneas O’Connell — are the actual leaders with 11. The pair wrote nearly every song she’s released together, and Finneas (who is also a solo artist under just his first name) produced them all. He is the main instrumentalist on their recordings and in her live band, and she brings him to the front of the stage every night and introduces him as “my big brother.”
Together or separately, they’re nominated for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album (for “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?”), Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance (for “Bad Guy”), Best New Artist, Best Engineered Album (for Finneas’ work on “When We All Fall Asleep”), and Finneas also scored a Producer of the Year, Non-Classical nod in an interesting and competitive field: He is a rare producer nominated for just one release (ordinarily producers are nominated for several) alongside Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey), Dan Auerbach (Black Keys, Yola), John Hill (Khalid, Cage the Elephant, Carly Rae Jepsen) and Ricky Reed (Lizzo, Maggie Rogers, Maren Morris).
Asked whether she’s excited about the prospect of being a Grammy nominee, Eilish told Variety last month, “Oh dude, we’ve watched the Grammys every year for my whole life. I always used to judge everybody’s outfit — I would sit on my living room floor and just be like, ‘Her dress is so ugly!,’ she laughed. “But no, I’m really excited,” she continued more seriously. “I don’t care if I don’t win anything at all. It’s such a cool opportunity, and I’m so excited to go and see some of my friends.”
The awards take place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Jan. 26.