Song Exploder - Billie Eilish - Everything I Wanted

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

Billie Eilish started releasing music when she was 14 years old. Her debut album came out last year, when she was 17. It debuted at Number 1 on Billboard, went triple platinum, and won five Grammys. Billie made that record with her brother and creative partner, producer Finneas O’Connell, in their parents’ house in Highland Park, Los Angeles.  While working on that album, they also started writing this song, “Everything I Wanted,” which came out as a single in November 2019. It was Billie’s second top ten hit, and it went double platinum, too. In this episode, you’ll hear some of the original voice memos Billie and Finneas made while writing, and the two of them explain why the song was almost never finished. songexploder.net/billie-eilish

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Before we get started, a note about the content of this episode. It contains explicit discussion of suicide and suicidal thoughts. So please take care when listening. Also, if you or someone you love is having thoughts of suicide, confidential help is available for free. You can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273 Talk. That's 800273-8255.

You can also text the crisis text line. Just text hello to 741-741. You're not alone. Billy Eilish started releasing music when she was 14 years old. Her debut album came out last year when she was 17. It debuted at number one on Billboard. It went triple platinum and won five Grammys. Billy made that record with her brother and creative partner,

the producer and artist Phineas. While working on that album, they also started writing this song, Everything I Wanted, which came out as a single in November 2019. It was Billy's second top ten hit, and it went double platinum too. I spoke to both Billy and Phineas

about how the song was made, and in this episode, you'll hear the original voice memo they made while writing, and the two of them explained why the song was almost never finished. My name is Billy Eilish. My name is Phineas. I am a co-writer and producer on this song.

song. So the first night that we wrote it was, I think, September 2018. We were at the tail end of working on Billy's debut album, and we were having that sort of second-guessing moment where we thought, do we have every song for this album? Should we try writing one or two more? And I literally had had a dream the night before that I had jumped off like a building or something. I'd jumped off something. I'd jumped off something in my dream and I basically had died in my dream and the whole dream was me watching how everything went after I died like I was there for it and I could see everything and I was looking at my life through like my non-existence just seeing how it was going I remember in the dream there were newspapers that said like problematic 16 year old Billy Eilish has finally killed herself and my

best friends were like doing an interview and they were like, you know, oh, we never really liked her. Like, we're pretty glad that she died. So it was definitely like one of those dreams that was like everything you've been thinking put into a horrible, horrible reality. I couldn't think of anything else. It was, it was the only thing that was on my mind. So I was very, very caught up and distracted and distant the entire day. And I couldn't stop thinking about it. I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop, like, feeling it and being scared and, like, worried. And so we just sat down and I told Finne's about it and we just, like, had to write about it. I don't know.

It just needed to be said. Billy has been, you know, not only my primary collaborator for the last five years, but my most intertwined creative relationship. Finnis is, like, my best friend in the world and has been. And I definitely would have talked about it with Phineas, even if we hadn't been making music at all. Having Phineas listen and also know me in a way that I don't know me has really been important for our creative process. I think one of the benefits of Billy being such an assertive person and having such a clear-cut vision is that when I am working on music production for her,

I know the color palette that something should be. So I crafted what became almost the entire instrumental of this song. What I try to do with instrumentals is like have something that feels organic and human and then put it on its edge and play it in a way that might be a little atypical. So, you know, just a piano for the first 20 seconds of the song, how can I make that unique?

And so that was when the side chain compression idea came to me. Side chaining, in this song's case, It's a compression plug-in put on the piano and then configured to react not to the piano itself but to the information of another track, in this case, a kick drum, and in this case a muted kick drum. And so you get this sort of undulating,

like tide going in and out feeling on the piano without even having to hear the kick drum. It comes in halfway through the verse. The piano is so beautiful. It just drew me in, like, right away. 95% of the time, Billy is there the entire time I'm working on production because she is so informative to it, and she'll save me a ton of time. You know, if she's not there, I could really quickly go off the deep end into an area that she wouldn't like.

And so Billy's kind of always there to guide it. There's this kind of, like, tonal snare to this song, which is actually just a synth layer, but it only plays on the twos and fours. It sounds like the snare is like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, like an ice pick hitting a gold mine or something, right? It has that like ping sound, which I just thought was super interesting. That combined with the side chain compression of the piano,

those were the two things that got us excited. And then we were just writing to that. This was all in the bedroom that I had in my parents' house in Highland Park. The best thing that I had in my childhood bedroom is my granddad's beat-up, upright, Everett piano. I mean, that piano sitting there just as an acoustic instrument in the room is such a huge help in terms of writing songs. Because you play the loop, but the loop on your computer can drive you crazy. And so just sitting there and playing the piano and going as slow as you want and picking up a chord change if you want it to be there is so vital. Wait.

My brother and I have voice memos on our phone, and we record everything we do, and we record all types of stuff. That audiophile is essentially us doing what we always do when we write songs, which is just make-believing them into existence. And I think it is also one of the many advantages of working with your sibling is

it's a very vulnerable process to be just singing gibberish and bad melodies over. her stuff for an hour to get the right thing because it's too scary. You know, luckily, Billy's not intimidated by me at all. She's perfectly comfortable to sing any idea that comes into her head until she comes up with the perfect one. I had a dream. I got everything I want, not what you think.

And if I'm being honest, it might have been a nightmare. It's a crazy dream. Dreams are so weird. I was also really depressed at the time and had been suicidal in the past. And it was weird telling Phineas about the dream I had because I was like, well, I had this dream that I kind of got what I wanted, which is, you know, dying, which is ridiculous. And when I think about it now, it's like, Jesus Christ, that's dark. But to be honest with you, it was real.

You know, Billy's the person that I love most in the world. So hearing the person that you love most in the world talk about, something that's so clearly bleak was an upsetting experience. In the actual dream, when I jumped off, there were fans standing there at the bottom, and they just filmed me jump off, and nobody did anything. I thought I could fly, so I stepped off the golden. Nobody cried. Nobody even noticed.

I saw them standing right there. Kind of thought they might care. Finnees got mad because he didn't want to write about it. He didn't like to think of me as in this headspace. I think it actually was really scary to me when we were writing this song to hear her articulate her depression in a way that was sort of more obvious than I think she was making it on a day-to-day basis.

And so that was kind of alarming. I got pretty flipped out and told her so. I remember it became like an entire, like family argument. Like my mom came in and tried to be, you know, the mediator. And then it was just a lot of yelling from me pretty much because I couldn't believe that they were telling me that like I shouldn't be writing about this. And I realized in the middle of it that they just didn't understand that it was actually how I felt. Like they didn't see that. So I went into my room and I like locked myself in my room. And it was so, so intense. And because of that,

We didn't write the rest of it for like probably half a year. We were really stuck for like a second. We didn't really know where to go with it because it was such a downer of a song. The song definitely wouldn't have been the same song that it ended up being had we written every word of it that day. I think sort of life had to move on. And the place that Billy was in and the place that I was in

when we ended up finishing the song was a really different mental state. In March 2019, Billy's debut album came out, and it was an instant hit. By June, it had sold over a million copies in the U.S. alone. But everything I wanted wasn't on it. We didn't finish it in time for the album, but we liked everything that we had for it. And in August or something, we kind of opened it back up. Over the summer, we toured a bunch.

And every time I had a guitar in a green room for the next year, I would play those chords and try to pick out the next line. So there was like line by line it would come together in like places like Victoria, Australia, and then we'd get another line in Berlin, Germany. And because I was getting better mentally and I was working on my mental health, I was like seeing it from a new perspective and also wanting it to be a different perspective. And I remember we were sitting in Phineas's room and we were like, well, what is the end of this song? Like, where does it go?

It's talking about a horrible thing that happened. How do we make that better? What do we do that can help people that feel that way too? And we just kind of both, I feel like, realize at the same time that the two of us, meaning me and my brother Phineas, were that and that we were going to make the chorus about us and our relationship with each other and how we've both pulled each other out of dark places in our lives.

We were parsing our way through the chorus, and we were trying to figure out how to change the narrator, because obviously the verse is in first person, and the chorus is also in first person, but they're playing different roles. And so I thought if we introduced the chorus with, and you say, that recontextualized everything, and then it allows it to be a conversation,

as opposed to one person. And you say, I don't want to lie here, but you can learn to, I think, is a great Billy expression, which is just like you can deal with it. Like you can deal with essentially what we all do throughout our lives at certain points, which is like exist because others need us to sometimes, you know. I think there are days we've all had in our lives where we would check out that day. We'd go upstairs and put the covers over us for the entire duration of that 24-hour period

because we do not have the drive or the motivation, but you're called upon by other people in your life to be there for them. And so the song essentially became a song about our own relationship with each other, which was that we'd ride or die, that we'd be there for each other through terrible experiences

and the greatest experiences. That's the two-way street of having a sibling as you have this person who is just interwoven into your life, I mean, especially in our case just because we've made a career together. And then, especially because this song is about him and I, it just made sense to have his voice in there. As long as I know you, don't want you can learn to. Because I put out music on my own and produce music for other artists, there have been a few articles written about me that have titled that are like, you know, Phineas is more than just Billy Eilish's brother.

And my counter to that is always like, I don't care if I'm anything more than that. Like, that is plenty to me. I think that that really became part of the narrative of this song was that it was not a romantic love song. It was a love song written by like a family member that loves you. Never could try to see yourself. They don't deserve you. Once we just got the vibe of where it was going to go

and how it was going to play out, that's kind of when the song clicked. And I don't think we would have been able to write that had I still been in that really, really dark headspace because I don't think I would have been able to find a light in that, you know, hole that I was in. So we came home from that tour in September and finished the song in the next couple of weeks.

Second verse, architecture in songs is like all about reintroducing the same ideas in a compelling attention-grabbing way. And I felt that the piano's presence had become kind of taken for granted. And the way to get someone to pay attention to something is to take it out and put it back in. So I pulled it out. I introduced this kind of like low, chordal bass arpeggio. I tried to scream. But my head was underwater. I've always been a huge fan of sort of like literalization of lyrics.

So I loved the idea of pulling out all of the high end on her voice when she says my head was underwater. I just hear kind of muffled sounds. But my head was underwater. They called me weak. There's so many vocals that you would never even notice if somebody didn't play them isolated. If they're harmonies, if they're like a little whisper, if they're like just repeating the word.

But when I wake up I see. It really changes a song. I did so many vocals. It's just so fun to see what your brain comes up with without you even thinking. Feels like yesterday was a year ago. Because everybody wants something from me now. And I don't want to let them down. That, like, space between you just got big

and then you have to make something else is a very scary place. All you want to do is satisfy. And because my album had come out and because, you know, I was having this really big moment, but I had been touring all summer and I hadn't really put stuff out, all you're thinking about is, like,

how do I make them sense? still care about me, which is something I never thought about before. I didn't give a damn who cared about me, who didn't. But because of that little space between, like, first album and the next thing you put out, it's a big deal. And this was when I was doing good. Like, I was happy. I was living my life.

I was doing really good. But at the same time, I was, like, very aware of the fact that there were a lot of people that I could let down. Because everybody wants something from me now. And then there's the outro, which is, you know, if I knew it all then, would I do it again? That's like the epitome of what that dream was, talking about fame, and, you know, if you were to commit suicide and you could see how life went after that, would you do it again? You said, if I knew it all then would I do it again? But they said, would go straight to my head?

What would they say instead? You said that line is also about fame. And to the extent that it's about that, do you have an answer? If you knew it all, then, would you do it again? It's, uh, would I, I, for a while there, I thought, No, I would not. But I think now I would do it again.

I never ever thought that I would be able to say that I got out of that dark place. Since then, yes, I have changed so, so much. And I worked on my life and I, like, held on. And I just basically was patient and got out of it. And I can't even believe that. And it doesn't mean that I'm always going to be happy for the rest of my life now. I'm going to have times where I go back into a dark place. But it is important to remember that you do get out of that.

And it's just going to happen again, but you're going to do it again, and you're going to be okay again. I think more than anything, it made the song more interesting to me to go there, to start in a place of like this hopelessness and to arrive at the sort of destination of like companionship and love because that is the truth of my life and of Billy's life is just that we are both there for each other and our parents are both there for us and we're just really lucky in that sense.

It's interesting because that's like one of the only songs we've ever written where half of it was written in a super different place than the other half. I fully can listen to it and not relive it, and I think that it's because of where we took the song. That's what it needed. It needed that because that's what I needed. You need somebody that's going to be like,

I am here for you. It's nice to look back and have gotten better and happier in life, but, you know, it's important that I think we remember how we did feel so that we're grateful for how we feel now. I think now when I listen to it, it almost feels like better to listen because it shows me how much I've grown. And now here's everything I wanted by Billy Eilish in its entirety. I've got everything I want, not what you think.

If I'm being honest, it might have been a nightmare. To anyone, why did even notice, I saw them standing that thought they might care you. When you say, tried to scream. It was underwark. They called me weak. I'm not just somebody's daughter. It could have been a night, man. And you say...

Visit SongExploder.net for more on Billy Eilish and Phineas. You'll find links to buy or stream everything I wanted, and you can watch the music video for it, which Billy yourself directed. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh, Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career.

And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage.

And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.cash.c-o. Or just go to song-exploder.net slash live. That's song-exploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is made by me, Rishi Kesh Hereway, with producer Christian Coons, production assistant Olivia Wood, and illustrator Carlos Lerma. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of creative, independent podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm.

If you'd like to support the podcast, you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. You can also follow the show on Twitter and Instagram at SongExploder. My name is Rishi Kesh Your Way. Thanks for listening.