Think about worrying that you just’d reached your inventive songwriting peak earlier than you might even legally order a beer. That’s the existential dread Billie Eilish mentioned she suffered earlier than Barbie director Greta Gerwig got here knocking with an project.
“I actually was involved that it was over for me. We’d been making an attempt and it wasn’t doing what it often would do in me. I used to be actually like, ‘Rattling, perhaps I hit my peak and I don’t know the best way to write anymore?,’” Eilish advised The Hollywood Reporter for its Hit Squad songwriter roundtable, the place she talked about inspiration, frustration, first songs and cringe-y lyrics with fellow songwriters/singers Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo, Jon Batiste, Cynthia Erivo and Julia Michaels.
Eilish, 21, mentioned she was struggling to search out recent inspiration earlier than the decision got here from Gerwig in January with the Barbie soundtrack project. The consequence, after all, was Eilish’s haunting ballad “What Was I Made For?,” which not solely hit Nov. 14 on the Billboard Sizzling 100, but additionally garnered the seven-time Grammy Award winner one other 5 nominations for the 2024 Grammys.
“Greta saved me, actually, actually,” Eilish mentioned of the observe she wrote with songwriting companion brother Finneas. “It introduced us out of it and instantly we have been impressed and wrote a lot extra after that.” And although we’ve not 12 months heard what else they cooked up for Eilish as-yet-untitled third album, the story of battle opened the door for Eilish to explain the making of the music in higher element.
Eilish mentioned she and Finneas have been within the studio on a wet January day the day after they first noticed the film — whose soundtrack garnered 11 Grammy nominations total — at a time after they have been super-stuck. “It was only a day of nothing. It was simply thought after thought after thought of simply no concepts. Nothing was taking place. It was the least inventive,” she mentioned of the unproductive six-hour session.
Then Finneas steered they attempt to write the Barbie project, which Billie was not psyched to tackle after such a irritating day. “I used to be like, ‘What? You suppose after the day of rubbish we’ve simply made, we’re going to make an ideal music for one thing that wants one thing actually good?,’” she requested. “I used to be like, ‘I don’t even have that in me.’”
Although the siblings had struck Oscar gold earlier than with their James Bond theme “No Time to Die,” Eilish didn’t suppose she had “one thing astounding” in her. However as soon as Finneas started taking part in the piano, Eilish — sitting on a sofa with a handheld mic — began singing because the brother and sister talked in regards to the “floating class of [Barbie] and her means to be so clean and exquisite and excellent on a regular basis. After which the juxtaposition of her all of the sudden falling and [she] can’t do all the pieces completely.”
That impressed the road “I used to drift, now I simply fall down,” which led to the music’s title and a breakthrough. “Then we have been each asking the query after that and we did that in in all probability 5 minutes. It was prefer it was God. It was simply probably the most good instance to me of true inspiration and connection,” she mentioned. “It was residing in me that entire day, nevertheless it wasn’t popping out of me. We didn’t go into it realizing in any respect what we have been going to make or if we have been going to make something. And it was simply so clear that we would have liked to.”
Rodrigo, 20, weighed in on how writing the music “Can’t Catch Me Now” for the brand new Starvation Video games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes prequel took her out of her consolation zone in one of the simplest ways. “It was a lot enjoyable. Most of my songs are very diaristic in nature and sort of about my life. It was such a enjoyable problem to look at this film by the eyes of this character and attempt to seize herperience by my phrases and my voice,” she mentioned. “There’s a lot inspiration in limiting your self generally.”
Lipa mentioned her expertise writing the Barbie music “Dance the Evening” was, from the start, “probably the most enjoyable expertise. It was one thing that I hadn’t completed earlier than.” She mentioned soundtrack producer Mark Ronson DM’d her on Instagram saying the script was hilarious and he needed her to jot down a music for its iconic dance sequence.
“I used to be like, ‘That is an absolute no-brainer. One thousand p.c sure,’” she mentioned. “It’s a lot about stereotypical Barbie having an existential disaster and discovering out what it’s wish to expertise the human situation and the way in which that we’re as folks and the feelings that we really feel. And consistently striving for perfection however not fairly reaching it, striving for one thing deeper in a means. Greta was saying how impressed by disco she was. I simply thought of disco and the neighborhood it brings, and the way in which it brings folks collectively. It was at all times a style of music that was such a launch when issues weren’t going effectively on the planet.”
The dialogue additionally had Erivo dissecting the primary lyric she wrote at 16 for a South African lady group and Rodrigo’s first effort, a “feminist anthem” known as “Superman” she wrote at 14 about how she didn’t want a Superman to return and save her. Dua Lipa remembered a music she wrote at 4 or 5 in her native Albanian she’d sing round the home with lyrics about eager to be identical to her mother.
As you would possibly count on, Eilish’s first try, at 8, featured some usually darkish lyrics: “I’m happening, down, down into the black gap, sweeping up your soul at present …”
