Billie Eilish says ‘Barbie’ song ‘What Was I Made For?’ is more personal than she thought it would be
By Alli Rosenbloom, CNN
(CNN) — Billie Eilish set out to write the “Barbie” movie’s end credits song “What Was I Made For?” about the titular Mattel doll at the center of the summer’s biggest blockbuster. But the result was a bit more personal than the Grammy winner intended.
“I swear to God, I never thought about myself one time,” Eilish said of writing the Golden Globe-nominated track in a new clip of The Hollywood Reporter’s Songwriter Roundtable posted on Sunday. “I was thinking about a character, and my brother was thinking about a character.”
Eilish wrote most of the song, a haunting track that speaks to finding meaning and purpose, with her collaborator and brother, Finneas, in one night, she said.
It wasn’t until she played the song for a friend that she realized she had inadvertently written something close to her heart.
“We were sitting in the car and I was like, ‘Oh my God…this b— is singing about me,” she said, laughing.
Earlier in the chat, Eilish said she finds songwriting “very difficult” and “I find honesty in songwriting very hard and out of my reach.” She had looked forward to writing a song that was not about her own life for the Warner Bros. film, which earned $1.5 billion worldwide at the box office. (The studio, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
Describing the moment she realized the song had a personal meaning as “scary,” the “Bad Guy” singer said she “felt like it was as if you woke up and someone had taken a photo of you sleeping.”
Eilish and Finneas released “What Was I Made For?” in July ahead of the “Barbie” movie’s theatrical debut.
It is nominated for a Golden Globe for best original song alongside “I’m Just Ken” by Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson, “Road to Freedom” by Lenny Kravitz, “Dance the Night” by Dua Lipa, “Peaches” by Jack Black and “Addicted to Romance” by Bruce Springsteen.
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