Billie Eilish says she'd rather do photo shoots 'over anything else' even though they can be 'incredibly excruciating'

• Billie Eilish reflected on her fame and career for her new audiobook, released on Tuesday.
• "I used to rather do a photo shoot than pretty much anything else, to be honest with you," she said.
• She said that even though photo shoots can be "excruciating," she has "always loved" being on camera.

Billie Eilish reflected on her early years of stardom for her new audiobook, "Billie Eilish: In Her Own Words," released on Tuesday alongside her new photo book.

"I used to rather do a photo shoot than pretty much anything else, to be honest with you," she said in an excerpted clip provided to Insider. "I wanted to be on camera, somehow, over anything else. And I feel like you can really see it."

Eilish said that photo shoots are typically "hours and hours long," and are not always comfortable environments, but still remain high points of her job.

"I was at a shoot the other day, actually, and the photographer was saying something about being on camera and whatever, and he was asking me how I feel about it," she said. "He literally was like, 'God, who does like to be on camera? Who likes it? Who wants to do these shoots?' And I'm like, 'I do!'"

"Believe me, they can be incredibly excruciating and boring and awful, especially if it's a group of people that you are not fond of - that can be very, very, very painful," she continued. "Or something you don't like, or clothes you don't like, or makeup you don't like, or hair you don't like. Everything involved has to be right. But I've always loved it."

Eilish explained that when she was "10 or 11," she received a camera for Christmas and would take self-portraits in her own backyard, using a bedsheet as a backdrop.

"I'd do my own photo shoots all the time. And I'd make my friends do it," she said. "I remember dressing my friends up and making them go out in the rain in the middle of the street and lay down on the road, because I just loved it."

Just a few years later, Eilish was thrust into the spotlight at age 13 when she uploaded her first official song to SoundCloud. "Ocean Eyes" became a surprise streaming hit and caught the attention of music blogs.

She signed to Darkroom/Interscope and quickly adopted a macabre aesthetic, which she said was inspired by her love of "being looked at."

More recently, the 19-year-old Grammy winner went blonde and stunned the world with a sophisticated lingerie-clad British Vogue cover.

"I just wanted to take pictures and I wanted to be in pictures," she said in the audiobook clip. "So I'm really glad that I get to do that now, you know, more real."