The singer opens up about a surprising revelation she made days after writing the hit 'Barbie' ballad, 'What Was I Made For?'
Billie Eilish isn't leaving people on read -- because the singer apparently has a staggering amount of unread text messages on her phone.
The 21-year-old pop star revealed that she had more than 1,400 unopened texts during a recent interview with Vanity Fair, when asked how she "quiets the noise" surrounding any public discourse about her.
"I'm not really listenin'," she answers. "The team can attest."
Her brother and producer/co-writer, Finneas, chimed in with a laugh, saying, "Not to throw Billie under the bus, but you're asking how Billie quiets the noise and Billie's like, 'What's going...? Who's going..?'"
He continues, "Very little noise gets in there."
"I don't know what the hell is going on," Billie agrees, whipping out her cell phone to prove a point.
"I have 1,461 unread texts right now," she admits. "I'm not lookin' at that stuff."
Billie is currently engaged in a media blitz to promote her Barbie single, "What Was I Made For?" as an awards season contender. The song is currently up for five GRAMMYs (Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop Solo Performance, Best Song Written for Visual Media and Best Music Video), while the Best Original Song nominees for the upcoming film-centric Golden Globes and Academy Awards have not yet been revealed.
"When we were writing this, we were very, very much writing about, you know, a character," Billie says of the chart-topping ballad, which she co-wrote with Finneas.
"We were writing from the perspective of a character and her life and the way she sees through world through her eyes and her experiences," she continues. "And it wasn't until, like, two days later that I was listening to it and I was like, 'This is me. This is my life and how I feel.' And it was pretty weird to, like, not realize that my subconscious was doing that -- and also, just that I related a lot to this character."
"What Was I Made For?" plays during a crucial scene for Margot Robbie's titular Barbie and was billed by filmmaker Greta Gerwig as the character's "heart song."
"I think it's an excuse to be a little braver than you might be willing if you are writing something that you know people are going to perceive as autobiographical," Finneas says.
"That is so true," Billie nods in agreement.
"I think if you write a lyric like, 'I'm sad again / Don't tell my boyfriend' and you know your boyfriend is going to hear it and think, 'Jesus Christ,' that takes a different amount of courage than being like, 'That's Barbie!'" Finneas continues.
"'No, it's literally not about you! Yeah, no, it's a character!'" Billie jokes. "I was hittin' that the next day."
Billie describes the song as one of the "top three hardest songs" she's ever recorded.
"It's not even that it's high, it is high in my range, but it's not about that," she explains. "It's about the delivery. I was trying to do a very specific thing with my voice which was like this very soft, held back, you know, upper range falsetto."
Billie says that she could have delivered the tune in a wide variety of styles -- from belting it out, to a traditional choral performance -- but felt "that's not what the song wanted."
"There's so many ways I could have sung it, but none of it worked the way that this kind of heartbroken, almost like you were just crying and now you're singing delivery was," she says, "and it was the hardest choice of all of the choices I could have made."
Billie did address some recent "noise" this week when she accused Variety of "outing" her at the magazine's Hitmakers Brunch in Los Angeles on Saturday, where she had been honored with an award.
The "Bad Guy" singer took to Instagram on Sunday to post some snapshots from the event, and thank Variety for the honor presented -- before calling them out for "outing" her during an interview before the event.
"Thanks variety for my award and for also outing me on a red carpet at 11 am instead of talking about anything else that matters," Billie wrote in the caption -- which was covered by a shot of her belt buckle, featuring the silhouettes of two women.
"I like boys and girls leave me alone about it please," she continued. "literally who cares[?] stream 'what was i made for'"
ET has learned Variety is standing by their reporting.
See more on that story below.
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