Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas stopped by BBC Breakfast in London ahead of their performance at the BRIT Awards, where the duo will live premiere their new Bond theme song. The pair discussed their newfound fame, writing “No Time To Die” and why Eilish has been forced to back away from the Internet.
“It’s a very surreal thing, our lives as a whole,” Eilish told host Louise Minchin as the 15-minute interview kicked off. “But we’re very grateful for it.”
The musicians shared how they conceptualized and created “No Time To Die,” which will appear in the upcoming Bond film of the same name. “We wrote and recorded the Bond song on a tour bus in Texas,” Finneas said. “We did certain songs on the album in hotel rooms. You know, that’s kind of always been our philosophy: not letting the place that we are get in the way of making great music.”
Eilish added that they had a bad day trying to write the song in a studio, noting, “We had an intense amount of writers’ block as soon as we were called to action.”
Eilish also said that the pair has been wanting to make a Bond song for years and she doesn’t remember how the call to do this one came in. “I remember at the beginning of last year we kind of told our whole team, ‘Hey if any Bond things come up we want to be involved if we can possibly be,’” she recounted. “‘Whatever we have to do we will do.’”
“We really did not take the opportunity lightly and we really just tried to work as hard as we could to prove ourselves worthy of that,” Finneas added, explaining that they did some research on past Bond themes while writing. “We really wanted to make something that didn’t feel like we were trying to copy other great songs, so it was really helpful to listen to these songs,” he said.
During the interview, Eilish also admitted that her celebrity status has caused her to remove herself from the Internet. She said that she has “fully” stopped reading comments on Instagram. “It weird,” she said, “the cooler the things you get to do are, the more people hate you. It’s crazy.”
She added, “It’s like way worse than it’s ever been right now… I mean, it’s insane that I even have been reading comments up until this point. I should have stopped long ago. It’s just the problem is that I’ve always wanted to stay in touch with the fans and like keep talking to them and people have ruined that for me. And for them. They’ve ruined it for them and that sucks. I still try to like fans’ posts or whatever.”
She concluded by noting that while she loves interacting with her fans in real life, calling them “other me’s,” she can’t be online. “The Internet is ruining my life,” Eilish confirmed. “So I turned it off.”