Billie Eilish practically beamed accepting a Golden Globe for her work on the smash hit Barbie. The singer wrote “What Was I Made For” for the movie with her brother.
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At the time, Eilish confessed that she was going through some difficulties in her life. During her acceptance speech, Eilish said that she experienced bouts of depression at the time.
“It was exactly a year ago, almost, that we were shown the movie. And I was very, very miserable and depressed at the time,” she said via CNN. “Writing that song kind of saved me a little bit,” she said, adding, “a year later and here we are, and it’s really surreal. I feel incredibly, incredibly lucky and grateful.”
The tune ended up being semi-autobiographical. However, Eilish said that wasn’t her intention when she decided to write the tune. She just wanted to collaborate with her brother. Instead, it was only after looking at the track that Eilish realized how much of herself was in the piece.
“I swear to God, I never thought about myself one time,” Eilish said in a new clip of The Hollywood Reporter’s Songwriter Roundtable. “I was thinking about a character, and my brother was thinking about a character.”
Billie Eilish Talks Dark Times
Eilish previously opened up about difficulties in her own life when writing the song. Accepting the Chairman’s Award at the Palm Springs Film Festival, Eilish opened up about using her platform to highlight mental illness. The singer said she experienced a dark episode during her life before writing the track.
“I would really like to say that this award and any recognition that this song gets, I just want to dedicate to anyone who experiences hopelessness, the feeling of existential dread and feeling like, what’s the point, why am I here and why am I doing this?” Eilish said, via a report from NME. “I think we all feel like that occasionally, but I think if somebody like me, with the amount of privilege that I have and the incredible things that I get to do and be and how I have really not wanted to be here … sorry to be dark, damn, but I’ve spent a lot of time feeling that way.”
Watching Barbie and working on the song ended up improving the singer’s spirits.
“Basically I was just watching Barbie say and feel things that I really, really, really resonated with and felt so close to. I felt so seen, and I did not expect that,” Eilish said. “I think that this movie is the most incredible, most empowering and beautiful and funny and just unbelievable piece of art in the world, and I’m so honored to be a part of it.”
[Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for LACMA]
