Billie Eilish questioned “why are we even doing this” while writing ‘Barbie’ track
Billie Eilish has opened up about the writing process behind her song for the Barbie soundtrack, ‘What Was I Made For?’.
Released in July, the track was written by Eilish alongside her brother and collaborator Finneas. It appears in Greta Gerwig’s hit Barbie film, which also features songs from the likes of Lizzo, Dua Lipa, Haim and Tame Impala.
During a new interview with Allure, Eilish recalled how ‘What Was I Made For?’ came about at a time when she was creatively uninspired.
“It was as if this song was a tiny creature inside of me for years, scratching the inside of me,” she remembered. “As soon as we got that prompt, the creature was like, ‘Okay, I’m out’, and we wrote that song in an hour or two.”
She continued: “We wrote it in a period of time where we couldn’t have been less inspired and less creative. That day we were making stuff, and were like, ‘We’ve lost it. Why are we even doing this?’
“And then those first chords happened, and [the lyrics] ‘I used to float/ Now I just fall down‘ came out and the song wrote itself. I have the whole video of us writing the song, and the first thing we wrote were those lines in the first 10 minutes.”
Eilish went on to say that she and Finneas were initially inspired by the Barbie character while writing the single, but explained how she later discovered that it was about her.
“We wrote most of the song without thinking about ourselves and our own lives, but thinking about this character we were inspired by. A couple of days went by, and I realised it was about me,” the singer said.
“It’s everything I feel. And it’s not just me – everyone feels like that, eventually.”
As for the response to the piano-led ballad, Eilish said: “The way the song has been heard and seen by women is so special to me.”
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Tom Skinner
NME
