Billie Eilish
Appearances
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
Probably. It was that Monica had been watching... The Globes, right? Yes. Yeah. I heard this because I woke up to texts from my friends in New York that were like, I didn't know you were going to be on Armchair. And I was like, oh, and I listened to it. Oh, yeah, because we kind of, we never do that, but we did it. Exciting.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
Okay, so then you're familiar with the debate. I remember it. Should we talk about it? Yes, let's talk about it. I remember both of your points. This is the day after the Globes or something. Monica's point, which was very kind, was Phineas stands there like a potted plant as they ask Billy a bunch of questions. And then they go, bye, guys. Wouldn't it be nice if they asked him a question? Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
Dax's point was... Who cares? It's a little interview before the Golden Globes and she's wearing a cool outfit and he's wearing a suit and he's the millionth person that night in the suit. And it's not a representation of who's more important. It's a representation of the audience and the interview.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
Also, I'm going to throw this in there. Red carpets fucking suck.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
they're so uncomfortable the idea that i get to stand there and not have to say anything is a thrill you like it well yeah and there are great interviews i don't want to be disparaging of all interviews i just mean the format and the environment if you watch an interview you can see they shift the mic over to me and billy relaxes and gets to not suddenly be nervous and have to come up with an answer to the question we've been asked 450 times in the last two months it's
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
I think that everybody in every avenue of their life is hoping to be seen for their work, right? If you do something, if you build your kids a playhouse and they go in and they go, well, whoever built this did a great job. And you go, I built it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
Whoever's right here. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
You want recognition. I feel very seen. I feel very lucky about how much recognition I already have. Most producers and songwriters have less than I do. I'm aware of that and I don't take that for granted. And being as famous as Billy is a nightmare. I would never want that. She wears it really well. And she is actually a rock star. I say that like as a person, like she is a charismatic enigma.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
The air gets crackly in the room when she walks in. And it's cool to see that. I don't feel that way when we're in my basement making a song, but like I see it at a function. And I don't want to have that. And I don't pretend to have it. And the consequence of that is she can't do anything. It's a heavy price to pay. But I guess back to the thing about...
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
Well, I think that both of you are basically practicing empathy and you're both talking about the same thing, which is you're recognizing the Robin Andy Richter of the armchair expert with Dax Shepard. When we got to that. Yeah. You probably know implicitly how it feels to be the person always there, always participating in the thing who's not the masthead.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
I put out some music under my own name and I don't feel any better or worse about that in terms of like, if somebody goes, I love your thing. I go, thanks. I don't have, oh, that means so much more to me than saying you like Billy's thing.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
You also give it to each other. I mean, like, that's the other thing. Billy is so generous and effusive about me to me privately or publicly to me. And I for sure feel the same way.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
My mom has always written songs. She's never made a penny off of it, but she's always done it. I don't actually fully know the origin of that in her life. I don't know what switch flipped for her that made her start writing songs. Should have asked her before this interview. That was kind of always in our house. She was sitting down at the piano. and singing stuff. And I was like, what is it?
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
She's like, I'm writing it. So that was real. People write new stuff. And our dad doesn't write at all, but he's a pretty good pianist. And he would sit around and plunk out Beatles songs or play pieces he liked. When I was 12, I started singing in this choir and I immediately was very smitten with this girl in the choir who was 13. I might've even been 11.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
It was never going to happen, but I was hopeful. And I had this fantasy that I would be in the choir rehearsal room before anyone else got there playing a tune wistfully. Yes. And that she'd come in and it would win her over. This was really concocted. I know it well.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
And the only thing in my way was I had to learn. how to sing and play piano.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
Small. And so I set about doing that. And I asked my dad, like, I want to learn how to play this song. And he said, okay, there's like four chords in it. And he taught me the four chords. And that took like a week to learn just sort of shapes on piano. And then I said, oh, thanks for teaching me that. I want to learn this other song. And he was like, this other song is the same four chords.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
And that completely turned my world upside down. Like the idea that I'd learned all this stuff without trying to learn all this stuff was so thrilling. And pop music is absolutely like that. I don't know if either of you play anything, but there is such commonality in the sort of music underneath the song that if you want to play some song by this artist, you're also learning 600,000 other songs.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
But you have a very strange order of events, which is you have written Ocean Eyes for your own band. Yeah. A couple of things happen. I get Logic Pro, the DAW, which is same as Pro Tools or Ableton or something. A software on my computer to record. Start teaching myself how to do it. Go on YouTube to learn. I have one friend, Frank Dana, who's popular at his school. Huge currency at 17.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
And it's like, hey, you produce, right? And you're like, well, not really. And he's like, that's fine. Let's do some stuff. What a huge vote of confidence. And the real truth is like neither of us were good at making music at all. But I suddenly was making stuff with him and we're putting it on SoundCloud and his friends are listening to it and telling me I did a good job at producing it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
And I'm feeling so cool. I sort of say to Billy at some point in the summer of 2015, I'm like, do you want to sing on some stuff? I'll write some stuff for you and you can sing on it.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
So she starts singing. She's 13. So she's just now at the age where she can maybe even tolerate me saying, do another take of that verse a little more angry or whatever. Right, right. And so we start recording and it's fun. And I'm still got this band and the band is in sort of first stage of crisis. The other guys had finished high school.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
I was homeschooled and I was like, I'm going to die for this.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
And our drummer, my friend David, who now is also a successful, great music producer, which is awesome, is in the same boat I am. He's like, I'm going to not go to college. Like I'm going to make music. And the other two guys are like, okay, we're going to go to college. College seems pretty cool. Our band sucks.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
We were not like Green Day. We were not making Dookie at 18. We were making like terrible music. And I write the song Ocean Eyes that I think is like, I appreciate myself sitting there, but it doesn't feel like something for my band. There's a kind of a femininity to it, to me. I hear it and I think I'd rather hear a girl's voice sing this.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
No, the band was like a stupid pop band. I write this kind of sad ballad song. Yeah, yeah. There's not even a place for guitar on this. How am I going to break the news to our guitarist? And so I say to Billie, do you have any interest in singing the song I wrote? And she sang it and I thought it sounded beautiful. And we recorded it and we put it on SoundCloud.
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Best of Wednesday 2024
The thing that I'd heard about happening that always seemed like bullshit, which was you put it online and it gets... plays straight up happened. Like we put it on SoundCloud and the next day it was on a blog. And then the next day it was on more blog and it just started to percolate. We were not on Ellen the next day. It was not viral, but it was happening.
Candace
BREAKING NEWS: Justin Bieber Is Exposing Hollywood. | Candace Ep 127
her yeah i definitely feel protective of her um it was hard for me being that young and being in the industry and not knowing where to turn and everyone you know telling me they love me and you know just turn their back on you in a second um so yeah it's it's hard because i want her to
Candace
BREAKING NEWS: Justin Bieber Is Exposing Hollywood. | Candace Ep 127
know that you know she can count on me but at the end of the day i don't want to i'm never gonna force myself to be in relationship with her it has to be natural right so i just kind of you know let her do her thing and if she ever needs me i'm gonna be here for her but um but yeah just protecting those moments because people take for granted uh encounters and um Yeah, so, yeah.
Candace
BREAKING NEWS: Justin Bieber Is Exposing Hollywood. | Candace Ep 127
I just want to protect her, you know? I don't want her to lose it. I don't want her to, you know, go through anything I went through. I don't wish that upon anybody. So, yeah, if she ever needs me, I'm just a call away.
Candace
BREAKING NEWS: Justin Bieber Is Exposing Hollywood. | Candace Ep 127
Wow. I feel violated right now.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Not gender dysphoria about my own gender, but I think a lot of women go through the feeling of, you know, just envying men in any kind of way, one way or the other. And for me, I...
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
would watch videos of different male performers on stage and just feel this like deep sadness in my body that I'll never be able to you know take my shirt off on stage and run around and like not try very hard and like
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
you know, just jump around on stage and that's enough and, you know, have enough energy from just myself with no backup dancers and no, you know, huge stage production and the crowd will still love me. And that's just like, only a man can do that. And because of that, I think more than almost anything else in my career, I was very, very, very determined to kind of prove that
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
thought wrong and I really did I really feel like I did I I didn't like the kind of pop girl leotard you know backup dancers hair done thing I didn't like that for me I liked it for other people but that didn't resonate with me I never saw myself in those people and Honestly, I never saw myself in any women that I saw on stage, but I did see myself in the men that I saw on stage.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And I thought that was unfair. And so I did everything that I could to kind of try to break that within myself and the industry.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Yes, exactly correct. I would watch those videos and instead of being jealous of the women who get to be around the hot men, I would be jealous of the hot men and I wanted to be them. And I wanted to dress like them and I wanted to, you know, be able to act like them. And to be fair... I had all sorts of women that I looked up to and artists that are the reason that I am who I am.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And also, I wouldn't have been able, even if I felt the way I did, I wouldn't have been able to achieve it had it not been for the incredibly powerful, strong-willed women artists and people in the public eye that came before me that made it possible for me. So my favorite singers are all kind of old jazz singers that I've always looked up to.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And I'm always forcing people to watch videos of Ella Fitzgerald singing live and Julie London singing live and, you know, Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson and all these people. We were watching these videos and Every single one, of course, because of that period of time, they're all wearing dresses. They're all wearing tight, you know, corseted maybe dresses with their hair done.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
But like they didn't, they couldn't, they couldn't just not do that. You know, that's part of how things were then. And so thank God that those women came before me because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do anything.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
I wish you the best for the rest of your life. Felt sorry for you when I looked in your eyes, but I need to confess I told you a lie. The love of my life Did I break your heart Did I waste your time I tried to be there for you
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
I've been watching you for some time Can't stop staring at those ocean eyes Burning cities and napalm skies Fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Yeah, I mean, honestly, there was one thing that really helped me, which was Our mom had us like go home and like watch something on TV or read something and just write down any interesting words that we see or like an interesting sentence.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And then kind of taking whatever you wrote and just try to make a song out of what you wrote or make a song about the thing that you thought was cool or about this one word or whatever.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
you know at least incorporating this one word into a song you already wrote just like new ways of of kind of taking um pressure off of yourself a little like that really helped me because songwriting always felt like a lot of pressure on me in myself alone and I think that I don't know if Phineas would agree but like something that I think has always helped in songwriting is
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
giving yourself permission to write a bad song. I think that sometimes you have this high expectation for yourself and you're like, no, no, no, it has to be really good. But you can't just sit down and make something perfect immediately every time. You have to try and fail. And that was something that was really hard for me. I'm not good at patience and I'm not good at
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
not being good at something until I am. I want to be really good immediately. And I think it's just something that helps me a lot is just allowing myself to not be amazing and just make something to make it and not worry if it's good.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Then you tried to break mine It isn't asking for a lot for an apology For making me feel like I'd kill you if I tried to leave You said you'd never fall in love again because of me Then you moved on
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
um yeah you know I like everyone and every woman suffer with a lot of body image issues and just hatred and dysmorphia and um I always have since I was a kid and I still have that girl in me and you know I've had a lot of as a human does getting thinner and then getting bigger and then getting fit and then getting not as fit.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Like your body changes over time, especially depending on like how you're living your life. And a couple of years back when we were making this album, I had been on this like really intense kind of health journey and I had lost a lot of weight and I'd gotten so strong and I was like thinner than I'd ever been and stronger than I'd ever been. Um,
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
But separately, I was like extremely unhappy and unaware of how unhappy I was until I was happy again kind of thing. Were you unhappy because you weren't eating enough? No, honestly, my fitness journey was like the thing that I held on to that I was the most proud of. But what was really interesting was I felt really proud of my body and how hard I'd worked. I mean, I was working out like...
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
two hours, like five or six days a week and, you know, wasn't eating gluten and dairy and sugar and past 7 p.m. and, you know, not a fun way to live at all, but it was something that, you know, I'm an addictive person and that was something that I got very addicted to and I loved that experience. But you were sad. Yeah, I didn't have much else to hold on to and I really had that.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
I had this kind of, journey of my strength kind of and within that period of time i would be on tour and i would come back and i remember like every single person that i would see that i hadn't seen in many weeks would be like oh my god you look amazing you look so skinny wow You look so happy. You look so healthy. Wow, Billie, you just look like you're just glowing. Like you're just so happy.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And it's just so nice to see her so happy. And she's just doing so great. And it was really interesting because I got obsessed with that validation. And I loved it. I loved every single thing that everybody said to me. But then I kind of started to think like, that's really interesting because I'm not happy at all. But I definitely am skinny. Yeah.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, Skinny was a song that we wrote out of a really, really like uninspired period of time that we had not created anything in and like had no ideas for anything. And it was just kind of a depressing period of time. And we were sitting in a studio and we wanted to write something. I really wanted to write something and couldn't come up with anything.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
and Phineas started playing chords and I started riffing on melodies and the lyrics came about because Phineas could see how I was feeling and kind of you know starts asking me questions and I start talking about how I feel and the things I've been going through and he's just so good at seeing me like nobody else does and like I don't even and being able to put it into words in a way that you know
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
I didn't even realize I was feeling, you know? And, like, he said that lyric, people say I look happy just because I got skinny, but the old me is still me and maybe the real me and I think she's pretty. And that was his lyric. And it's funny that he wrote that because it's me. It's how I felt.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
But it's just the magic of, like, working with somebody who, A, is such a genius, but also knows you like nobody else does. Wow.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
I fell in love for the first time With a friend, it's a good sign Feeling off when I feel fine 21 took a lifetime People say I look happy Just because I got skinny But the old me is still me When I step off the stage, I'm a bird in a cage, I'm a
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
my favorite pressure i know my favorite is like when i put a song out when we put a song out and like people are like you know how did she know i was feeling you know feeling this like what where is she hiding in my room and has been hiding for the last like year of my life to write this song that's exactly my life i think that's like one of the most magical parts about music and i've
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
had that as a fan too. And Phineas has too. Like you hear a song and you're like, Oh my God, this is exactly my situation. How could that be? But it's just that it can be because we're just all like suffering together. And it's nice to know that you're not alone in that.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Well, you know, we started making music when I was about 13. And as most 13-year-olds, I had not, you know, grown into my body and my voice and all the things that you age into as a human. And I always, you know, it's funny, like when things like that happen at a young age, you kind of have this idea that that's how things are going to be forever.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And so in my mind at the time, my voice was going to sound like it did then forever I thought it was going to be soft and my range wasn't going to be very big and I wasn't ever going to be able to belt and I wasn't ever going to be able to you know have much of a chest mix in my voice and you know I spent many years touring and singing and doing shows and My voice matured and started to change.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And in the making of Hit Me Hard and Soft, I started working with a singing teacher, which I hadn't done since I was a kid in my choir. And I kind of always felt hesitant to and kind of...
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
embarrassed to somehow and it completely has just honestly changed my life and I mean I've just my voice has just gotten you know 10 times better in the last two years and what's amazing is it's just gonna keep getting better
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
No, that's just how I sang. That's what's funny about it. I just, you know, I was like, I couldn't really do much else. Like I didn't have the range. I didn't have the strength in my vocal cords and my breathing, you know. And think about, you know, how your voice sounded when you were a kid opposed to now. It's a completely different thing.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
I think though, honestly, even though it was a lot for a young brain and body to deal with, um, In a way, the fact that I was a teenager and they were also teenagers somehow felt less kind of... I don't know. I think I just felt so connected to them because we were all the same age. And I think it can be really hard when you're an adult and you...
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
have fans that are children to you or, you know, way older than you. Like, I think that it, I think that something about us all kind of feeling like we were growing up together was like, like honestly comforting to me. And also, um, I didn't really have many friends for a couple of years.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Well, so this is what's interesting is we were homeschooled. We didn't go to school, but Phineas and I both had so many friends growing up and we did so many things and there was no shortage of friends. There was no shortage of activities and things to do, which I think can be surprising for people to hear because they kind of think like, well, then how did you meet them?
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And we had all sorts of things we did. I was... part of a choir and I was in a dance company and I, we did aerial arts and I rode horses and I did gymnastics and I acted and Phineas acted and I was in a, you know, there were so many things that were social for us. And honestly, when I became famous-ish at 14, It was not a good time in terms of like keeping friendships.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
I think when you're 14, that's kind of an age where friendships are already kind of rocky. And also all my friends did go to school. So like they were all going to high school and suddenly I had no way of relating to anyone anymore. And I kind of lost all my friends and I maintained a couple, but those were really challenging to keep even still.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And so for those few years of becoming this like enormous superstar, I was kind of feeling like, wait, what the hell is the point? I don't have any friends and I don't have like, like I'm losing all the things that I love so deeply and all the people that I love.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And so in a way, the fans kind of saved me in that way because they were my age and I felt like they were the only kind of friends I had for a while.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Right. Well, it's funny. Like, I always envied that. I remember like watching, you know, videos of men performing, whoever they may be. And, you know, people throwing bras and underwear and, you know, and I always thought like, oh, that's so awesome. So it's so sick, so powerful. I always was just jealous of that, and I remember when I was first doing shows...
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
You know, fans throw all sorts of things on stage. They throw gifts and presents and different flags of different kinds. And honestly, like right away, people started throwing bras when we were all, me and the audience, 16. And I loved it. I really did. You know, I spent many years having a lot of...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And so for those few years of becoming this like enormous superstar, I was kind of feeling like, wait, what the hell is the point? I don't have any friends and I don't have like, like I'm losing all the things that I love so deeply and all the people that I love.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And so in a way, the fans kind of saved me in that way because they were my age and I felt like they were the only kind of friends I had for a while.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
Right. Well, it's funny. Like, I always envied that. I remember like watching, you know, videos of men performing, whoever they may be. And, you know, people throwing bras and underwear and, you know, and I always thought like, oh, that's so awesome. So it's so sick, so powerful. Yeah. I always was just jealous of that and I remember when I was first doing shows
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
You know, fans throw all sorts of things on stage. They throw gifts and presents and different flags of different kinds. And honestly, like right away, people started throwing bras when we were all, me and the audience, 16. And I loved it. I really did. You know, I spent many years having a lot of...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
Not gender dysphoria about my own gender, but I think a lot of women go through the feeling of, you know, just envying men in any kind of way, one way or the other. And for me, I...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
would watch videos of different male performers on stage and just feel this like deep sadness in my body that I'll never be able to you know take my shirt off on stage and run around and like not try very hard and like you know just jump around on stage and that's enough and have enough energy from just myself with no backup dancers and no huge stage production and the crowd will still love me.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And that's just like only a man can do that. And because of that, I think more than almost anything else in my career, I was very, very, very determined to kind of prove that
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
thought wrong and I really did I really feel like I did I I didn't like the kind of pop girl leotard you know backup dancers hair done thing I didn't like that for me I liked it for other people but that didn't resonate with me I never saw myself in those people and I Honestly, I never saw myself in any women that I saw on stage, but I did see myself in the men that I saw on stage.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And I thought that was unfair. And so I did everything that I could to kind of try to break that within myself and the industry.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
Yes, exactly correct. I would watch those videos and instead of being jealous of the women who get to be around the hot men, I would be jealous of the hot men and I wanted to be them. And I wanted to dress like them and I wanted to, you know, be able to act like them. And to be fair... I had all sorts of women that I looked up to and artists that are the reason that I am who I am.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And also, I wouldn't have been able, even if I felt the way I did, I wouldn't have been able to achieve it had it not been for the incredibly powerful, strong-willed women artists and people in the public eye that came before me that made it possible for me. So my favorite singers are all kind of
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
old jazz singers that I've always looked up to and I'm always forcing people to watch videos of Ella Fitzgerald singing live and Julie London singing live and you know Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson and all these people we were watching these videos and every single one of course because of that period of time they're all wearing dresses they're all wearing tight you know corseted maybe dresses with their hair done but like they didn't they couldn't they couldn't
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
just not do that. You know, that's part of how things were then. And so thank God that those women came before me because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do anything.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
Well, you know, we started making music when I was about 13. And as most 13-year-olds, I had not, you know, grown into my body and my voice and all the things that you age into as a human. And I always, you know, it's funny, like when things like that happen at a young age, you kind of have this idea that that's how things are going to be forever.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And so in my mind at the time, my voice was going to sound like it did then forever I thought it was going to be soft and my range wasn't going to be very big and I wasn't ever going to be able to belt and I wasn't ever going to be able to you know have much of a chest mix in my voice and you know I spent many years touring and singing and doing shows, and my voice matured and started to change.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
I would watch those videos, and instead of being jealous of the women who get to be around the hot men, I would be jealous of the hot men, and I wanted to be them. I wanted to dress like them, and I wanted to be able to act like them.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And in the making of Hit Me Hard and Soft, I started working with a singing teacher, which I hadn't done since I was a kid in my choir, and I kind of always felt hesitant to and kind of...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
embarrassed to somehow and it completely has just honestly changed my life and I mean I've just my voice has just gotten you know 10 times better in the last two years and what's amazing is it's just gonna keep getting better
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
No, that's just how I sang. That's what's funny about it. I just, you know, I was like, I couldn't really do much else. Like I didn't have the range. I didn't have the strength in my vocal cords and my breathing, you know. And think about, you know, how your voice sounded when you were a kid opposed to now. It's a completely different thing.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
I think, though, honestly, even though it was a lot for a young brain and body to deal with, in a way, the fact that I was a teenager and they were also teenagers somehow felt less kind of... I don't know. I felt, I think I just felt so connected to them because we were all the same age.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And I, you know, I think it can be really hard when you're an adult and you have fans that are children to you or, you know, way older than you. Like, I think that it, I think that something about us all kind of feeling like we were growing up together was like, like honestly comforting to me. And also, um, I didn't really have many friends for a couple of years.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
Well, so this is what's interesting is we were homeschooled. We didn't go to school, but Phineas and I both had so many friends growing up and we did so many things and there was no shortage of friends. There was no shortage of activities and things to do, which I think can be surprising for people to hear because they kind of think like, well, then how did you meet them?
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And we had all sorts of things we did. I was part of a choir and I was in a dance company and I, we did aerial arts and I rode horses and I did gymnastics and I acted and Phineas acted and I was in a, you know, there were so many things that were social for us. And honestly, when I became famous-ish at 14, It was not a good time in terms of like keeping friendships.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
I think when you're 14, that's kind of an age where friendships are already kind of rocky. And also all my friends did go to school. So like they were all going to high school and suddenly I had no way of relating to anyone anymore. And I kind of lost all my friends. And I maintained a couple, but those were really challenging to keep even still.