Billie Eilish's "Everything I Wanted" Lyrics Are Not Her "Sh*tting on Fame"
Arriving just in time to put on an endless loop this weekend is Billie Eilish's newest single, "Everything I Wanted." The song is moody, slow, and introspective — basically, a classic Billie jam. But as is the case with every other song of hers, there's a lot going on with the tune underneath the surface, and the singer-songwriter broke it down for her fans during a recent interview.
With a big piano presence and a downtempo bass, Billie sets the stage on "Everything I Wanted": "I had a dream/ I got everything I wanted/ Not what you'd think/ And if I'm being honest, it might've been a nightmare." From there, Billie weaves a dreamy song has her apparently letting off some steam about her recent rocket to the top of the charts, and with it, becoming one of the biggest pop stars today. Naturally, questions about the lyrics to "Everything I Wanted" came up during her chat with Zane Lowe on Apple Music's Beats 1 show New Music Daily. It began with Billie revealing what her favorite lyric from the new track is and why:
"They all make me do that pouty emoji face," Billie told Zane. "Just, like, all of them, but I feel like the one that, and I think maybe it's the delivery as well, because it just sounds so hurt: 'It feels like yesterday was a year ago/ And I don't want to let anybody know/ 'Cause everybody wants something from me now and I don't want to let them down.' I just feel like, for me and Finneas [O'Connell, Billie's brother], that was so exactly what it was. I don't think we could have possibly put it any better than that. It was just exactly what the feeling was."
And while there were many things about "Everything I Wanted" that helped Billie release all those big, heavy feels, it sounds like she and Finneas, who helped her write and record the song, found time to have fun making it too. Toward the end of the song, Billie sings, "My head was underwater," and there's something particularly special about the fact that they actually recorded the line underwater.
"I mean, we couldn't not do that. Are you kidding? With that f*cking line, it was like, you can't not. We were sitting there like, [singing,] 'My head was underwater,' and we were like, "'Wait, wait. This is our chance,'" she said.
She also went broader in discussing her excitement about the track and its meaning during her chat with Zane. For Billie, "Everything I Wanted" isn't a song meant to lash out at the fame she's acquired in recent months but rather, an attempt to unpack all the big and complex feelings that came out of it, she explained.
"The song has so many meanings. Every lyric in that song has a very specific meaning and specific instance that it was written about," she said. "I just want to just sit down and write what every single line means just for myself, even if it's never shared with anybody. But what satisfies me so much about this song is that it's not me sh*tting on fame. It's me talking about how sometimes everything you wanted is not what you actually should. You know what I mean? It might not be exactly how you dreamed it, because it is a dream."
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