Billie Eilish: 'I was ghosted. It was insane'

She may be one of music's biggest stars, but it turns out even Billie Eilish is not immune to being ghosted.

The American artist, 22, told the BBC podcast Miss Me? that she had "a crazy ghosting happen" last year, adding: "It was insane."

Ghosting - for the uninitiated - is when a friend or romantic prospect suddenly cuts off all communication with you, without any explanation.

The What Was I Made For singer also said that she struggled to maintain friendships when she first found fame.

Eilish was just 14 when she unveiled her debut single Ocean Eyes. Since then, she has shot to worldwide stardom, scooping up multiple awards along the way.

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Speaking to Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver, Eilish said: "I've been ghosted for sure."

She said the incident happened last December, adding it was "literally unbelievable. To this day, [he] never texted me again."

"I was like, did you die? Did you literally die?," she said.

"It was somebody that I’d also known for years and had a plan, the day of, on the phone, making a plan, this is my address, be there at 3pm - never heard from him again. Ever. I couldn’t believe it."

Eilish said she later saw that he was dating someone else.

"And I was like ‘oh’. But I didn’t know people still did that. I genuinely didn’t know people did that.”

The singer and songwriter's third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, was released last month.

Earlier this year, she and her brother and collaborator Finneas O'Connell won the Oscar for Best Song with What Was I Made For?, which they penned for the Barbie soundtrack.

But Eilish said that stardom made it hard for her to have friends.

“Well I lost all of my friends when I got famous," she said.

"I suddenly was famous and I couldn’t relate to anybody. It was tough. It was really hard.”

Eilish said that her best friend, Zoe, remained by her side. But her only other friends were her employees.

"And then it was my 20th birthday and I remember looking around the room and it was only people that I employ. And all 15 years or more older than me."

She said one of those employees subsequently quit, out of the blue, and stopped talking to her.

"And it was the worst thing that happened to me. And that made me realise like ‘oh wait, this is a job'," she said. "If they left me they would never see me again."

Eilish said that since then, she finds it hard to be friendly to people she works with, "because I’m very freaked out by loss and I have a lot of abandonment problems," she said.

But she added that she has worked hard on making new friends and rekindling old friendships.

"Exactly a year ago, I reconnected with a bunch of old friends and now, I have so many friends,” she said.

“I have a crew now! I could literally cry about it. It’s been the greatest thing that’s happened to me."

She said that when she recently went with them to a party at Coachella, she burst into tears.

"I was like, "Guys, I have friends and I just love you guys so much, and it’s been so long since I’ve had friends. I cried… and it’s literally because I actually have friendship now again.”

The singer added that Allen’s track Smile had inspired her to make new friends.

In the 2006 song, Allen sings, "But with a little help from my friends / I found the light in the tunnel at the end."

"I used to want to cry hearing that line because I didn’t feel that way, because I didn’t have friends," Eilish said.

"And I remember thinking I want to feel that way. And I want to listen to this song that I relate to in every way and hear that line about friends and be like, my friends got my through it.”

Miss Me? with Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver is available on BBC Sounds.