Billie Eilish is thanking “Barbie” and Greta Gerwig for pulling the singer out of feelings of self-doubt when she was asked to pen a song for the upcoming film.
Featured on the “Barbie” soundtrack, Eilish’s new song “What Was I Made For” — out today — arrived after a period in which she and her record-producing brother, Finneas, felt uninspired creatively.
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“We’d really been having, both of us… Usually, it’s just me with the writer’s block, but not even writer’s block, but just the frustration in writing. And Finneas has always been the one that’s like, ‘No, no, no, let’s write. Let’s write.’ And honestly, we were in a period of time where we were both … like through this last winter, we’ve both been incredibly uninspired,” she told Zane Lowe in a new Apple Music interview. “And we’ve still been working and trying to make stuff.
“Honestly, that song was the first thing we’d written in a minute,” she admitted. “Even though we were coming up with ideas and coming up with this and that, I remember after we wrote that first half, I go, ‘I think we still got it.’
Eilish, 21, added that she and Finneas “were really in a zone of feeling like we lost it and feeling like, man, I don’t know if we can do this anymore.
“We were like, I was 15 years old, 16, 17, and he’s a teenager, you can imagine my thoughts of doubt. Like, oh, I can’t do this anymore,” she continued. “And ‘Barbie’ and Greta just pulled it out of me, I don’t know.”
The Grammy-winning musician took to Instagram on Thursday to elaborate on how important the song is to her.
“‘What Was I Made For?’ our ‘Barbie’ song (& video) is out now. In January greta showed me and finneas a handful of some unfinished scenes from the film; we had nooooo idea what to expect at ALLL… we were so deeeeeply moved.. that the next day we were writing and COULDNT [sic] shut up about it lolll andddddddddd ended up writing almost the entire song that night,” she captioned a clip from the video. “To be real with you this all seemed to happen in a time when i really needed it. i’m so so thankful for that.
Eilish added that the video “means so much to me and i hope it will mean just as much to you.”
She also took to her Story to share personal photos of the songwriting process, posting pics of the written lyrics in her journal alongside sketches of the Barbie logo.
Elsewhere during her heartfelt interview with Lowe, Eilish opens up about her experience being involved in “Barbie”, her feelings about songwriting for film and TV, and the childhood connection to Barbie that makes this a “full circle” moment.
