Billie Eilish’s fragile, love-soaked song, “Birds of a Feather,” almost didn’t take flight. In a new interview, the singer revealed that she nearly tossed out the single from her Hit Me Hard and Soft track list after considering it to be “kind of stupid.”
When speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Eilish shared that she and Finneas, her brother and frequent collaborator, had difficulty landing the chorus — particularly when delivering the line, “I’ll love you till the day that I die.” After wrapping the track, which stands out among her more moody offerings, Eilish still wasn’t completely behind it.
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“Multiple times I was like, ‘We should cut this,’” Eilish told WSJ. “Even when I played the whole album for the label, I was like, ‘Guys, this one is kind of stupid.’”
Despite her initial hesitation, “Birds of a Feather” would feature on her third studio album and become one of the most inescapable hits of the summer. The single reached Number Two on the Billboard 200 and topped the Billboard Global 200 for three weeks. Spotify also declared the track to be its most-streamed song of 2024 and the track garnered Grammy nominations for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Pop Solo Performance.
Elsewhere in the interview, Eilish discussed the music industry’s initial doubt that her introspective, more somber (and at times devastating) songs wouldn’t appeal to a wide audience. “It’s so funny to think back on all of the criticisms that were like, ‘The songs are too sad,’” she said, adding then when penning “Birds of a Feather,” she slipped in “something dark” so it wasn’t solely “rainbows and smiles.” The musician added, “We wrote about the idea that you’re going to die soon, and let’s make it last.”
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