Billie Eilish - BIRDS OF A FEATHER (Story of My Song)

I can't imagine I've ever seen my signature bigger. Yeah, you're like a founding father. Here we go! We have our sheet music to our song Birds of a Feather from our new album Hit Me Hard and Soft and we're going to break it down for you a little bit. Till I'm in the grave Till I rot away Dead and buried Till I'm in the care skin you carry If you go I'm going There's a lot of songs about dying for somebody and loving them till they die and I thought it was really fun to lean in and be like... Till I die for real and I'm in the grave and I'm rotting away. There's a line, I don't know if you should use this or whatever, but the first lyric we wrote was I want you to stay and then I have some lyrics in here which are all kind of just loving. We were like, oh we'll make a love song for the first time that doesn't have some sort of weird twist to it and then we were like... We twisted it. We were coming up with all these rhymes and grave came up so it kind of was already this happy sounding thing and then we just always love the juxtaposition of that with the lyrics. Here's the thing, with music my whole thing is that it's for the listener to decide what it means and doesn't matter what I wrote it about, what Phineas wrote it about, it's like it really doesn't matter as long as you interpret it however you need to. That's all you need to know. So don't take what I say to heart, but it's almost like someone like slamming you into a wall and being like you look really pretty and you're like wow that's really a lot. That's what I wanted the verse to do. I wanted it to feel like toxic and a little bit like love-bombing. I have a hard time with the first lyrics or like the first time I am heard in a song because it's like the most important part to me. So I will spend like days and days and days trying to get the right take of the first line. This was probably the most challenging out of the entire album to sing. I'm so specific about what notes I'm doing and so even though they feel like I'm just going I want you to stay I'm like da-da-da-da-da I want you to stay and it has to be this da-da stay It's not ahhh, it's not like a little slide, it's like two notes. This was not a happy album, like literally at all. This is how I wished that I was feeling and I wasn't really, but I was like I'm just gonna try to pretend. Two notes, y'all. Actually there's like a couple that are not there, hold on. Birds of a feather. Wow, careful! This pre-chorus, so tough. Such a darn disaster. Might be a good time for me to pop this open for a second. Birds of a feather We should stick together I know I said it Never think I wasn't better alone So the thing that's really cool about that is over top of that second chord in the progression which is the B minor, we had her do this real jazz part where she does like a minor I said I'd never think I wasn't better alone When I was touring, I never did a singing lesson. Never even did a vocal warmup. I never really did a vocal warmup. I would do like 5 minutes of lip trills. You know, your voice is truly like an instrument and if you work on it and you train and you practice, you actually can strengthen it and actually get better. And I can't even tell you how big of a difference like training has done for me. It's been really incredible. And this song, I wouldn't have been able to sing it how I did and sing it on stage how I do without the training that I've been doing. It's really awesome. Birds of a feather We should stick together This is an awesome sentence to say. We should stick together. We kind of played with like we should stay together We should play together or fly together, flock together. Birds of a feather flock together. And stick together just rolls off the tongue in a very satisfying way. This was another like whoever is right wins with me and Phineas. What I love about the way that we work is it's not really like Competitive? Yeah, we're not really competitive like that. It's really like best idea wins. And with this, I wanted it to be Might not be forever but if it's forever Forever is even better And I don't know what I'm crying And Phineas was like, it's better if it goes It's even better I forgot all about that one. We overthought this sort of simple song so hard. Yeah, we kept getting lost in the maze on this song. I don't think we've ever overthought another song more. So glad it's popular. There was like a period where we were considering not putting it on the album, but Thank God we didn't do that. Oh, I see a place I want to mark up. Might not belong. Those are two different words. Might not belong This was our big long lyrical puzzle. We rewrote that so many times we had different rhythms. We had this whole other part. Yeah, it's true. This... We didn't get that for 7 months. I'll love you till the day that I die When we hadn't set it up right made no sense to us. And then it was about setting up that line right. We kept saying it's like, how do you make I'll love you till the day that I die a punchline? Not just sort of like saccharine and meaningless. I know that I'll love you till the day that I die shouldn't be meaningless, but it felt a little meaningless before we got might not belong. Like not necessarily going to live another 80 years, but I'll love you till the day that I die, even if that's a few days. So that was our big setup. We had like different rhythms, different melodies. For a while it was, I know I should be terrified. What? Of what? We had like some like, I don't miss the way it was. And those also didn't feel truthful and they didn't feel like they were building to anything. And we also wanted to set up the I love you till the day that I die because it did feel kind of empty. So yeah, let's do the chorus. Let's see what happens. Oh, beautiful. Look at that. I love doing that. You guys killed that. Fixing stuff immediately. I just want context because that's technically, even though it's the last line of the pre-chorus, it's the start of the chorus. So, okay. Sorry. Now we play the chorus. I love you till the day, till the light leaves my eyes. I never thought about how the end of the pre is the beginning of the chorus. Billy and I spent a lot of time in the studio being like, I'll go, I think you should re-sing that chorus line. Billy goes, okay. And then I play it. She goes, this is what you think the chorus is? That's a big part of our... A big thing. Birds of a feather is a pre-chorus. And then, I don't know what I'm... is the chorus. And this is kind of like this... Post-chorus. This is like the post-chorus, second half of the chorus. But it's the same deal. But it is, it doesn't really matter, does it? We literally hated so much when we made it, didn't we? Also, I was singing it like... Die! I was like very, it was very guttural. We have the demo of that version and it's really tough. It's tough. I listened to it recently and I was like... It sounds like a horn. But she did a bunch of beautiful harmonies on those dies, too. I love me some harmonies. It's so funny, we play you these things and we're like... Yeah, there's a little bit of that. Seven hours. I love that verse. I have such a love for second verses. I feel like second verses, especially for us... All the best lyrics we've ever written. All the best lyrics we've ever written are in the second verse, weirdly. I added that sound bite of you like... Yeah, hang on. It's so awesome. Yeah. We pulled that out. There's a vocal... It actually... It's awesome. Do you have the original sound? That's the original sound. What am I saying? Cause. Cause the stranger... Wait. That's amazing. That's from Getting Older. Yeah. Guys. Cause the stranger... We didn't even know that. That's awesome. So that's the vocal from Getting Older, from Happier Than Ever. That came out... Our second album came out in 2021. But who would ever know? Who would ever know? Part of my year of crisis. I was going to say, I really loved the second verse at the time, because different from, I think, the rest of the song, where I said it was kind of like I was writing what I wanted to feel, this verse was really how I did feel. You know, I want you to see how you look to me. You wouldn't believe if I told you. Like, you're so obsessed with the idea that you're this, you know, unaccomplished, ugly, you know, whatever somebody might talk down about themselves and think. And it's like, you don't even know how you look to me. Like, in my mind, you are beautiful, special, talented. It's not actually possible to see ourselves how somebody else sees us, but if it was, you literally wouldn't believe it. Like, if I could give you my... View of yourself. View of you, you would be so shocked and so stoked, because it's awesome. You would keep the compliments I throw you instead of... Discarding them. Discarding them and just keeping this wall around. You would take them in and agree with them. And then, tell me it's a bit. That one's interesting to me, because I feel like people kind of hear it in a different way. For me, that's me being like, tell me you're joking. Like, tell me that it's a bit that you don't see how amazing you are. Say you want to quit. Don't be stupid. That, I wasn't referring to a relationship. I was referring to, like, one's, you know, career and job and someone who's just really doubtful of themselves when they have so much talent. I think there's, like, a note here. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's super small. I love it. I actually love this little part. Pretend this is here, probably. Yeah. This one goes down a half step, which is really cool. I think it's no. This, I tried a lot of different stuff with, because I didn't know if it was good enough to just hold it. So I tried a lot of, like, don't be stupid. Or, like, stupid. And none of that, it was kind of, like, so, it was kind of performative. There's lots of new lyrics to write. This is Sister Fried. These are the lyrics that we rewrote when we rewrote... The whole chorus. ...the entire chorus, because we were... Freaking out. Really freaking out. So we rewrote the chorus, and that was the part we heard before. So the... I don't know what I'm crying for And now we go to the belt. You want to go for it right now and try to do it? Absolutely not, but you could play the isolated vocal part. Oh. Do the thing I know... I remember, like, coming home and playing it for my parents at the time. Both of them were like... It was so loud. I mean, it's literally shouting. I'm shouting. But that second-to-last note was all I was aiming for. And then as I was doing it, I was like, it would be really cool if I went one more. And I did it, and it was awesome. There were various moments of this song that felt really good the whole time, and one of them was that outro. It feels very happy. It feels like... And sad. It feels both. We started the song on, I think, February 16th of 2023. We didn't finish it until... Literally January of the next year. Yeah. So long. Really a long time. I think sometimes you feel more ownership over something if it took you a long time. Sometimes when stuff happens really quickly, you're like, wow, I feel grateful for that, but you might not feel the sort of sweat that went into it. Well, I am incredibly happy and proud of this song. We figured it out, and we like it, and people are... Understanding it. Really understanding it and loving it, and it makes me really, really happy. It just went platinum, which is so fast and insane. I thought this was my flop song. We thought maybe this was the flop album, but we loved it. Here I go. Nice. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.