Billie Eilish “What Was I Made For?” released

What Was I Made For? Billie Eilish

Writer(s): Billie Eilish O'Connell, Finneas O'Connell (see lyrics here) Released: July 13, 2023 First Charted: July 29, 2023 Peak: 14 BB, 30 AC, 5 A40, 11 UK, 13 CN, 13 AU, 18 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.6 UK, 2.70 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 231.10 video, 1069.35 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Entering 2023, Billie Eilish already had a resume most artists could never hope to emulate. The singer/songwriter was born in Los Angeles, California, in 2001. Her debut album, 2019’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and its #1 single “Bad Guy” thrust her into the spotlight. She became the first woman to win the “Big Four” at the Grammys – Best New Artist, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year. She released “Everything I Wanted” in late 2019. It was another top-10 hit and won another Grammy for Record of the Year. The following year she wrote “No Time to Die” for the James Bond film of the same name. It won the Oscar for Best Original Song. In 2021, she released her second album, Happier Than Ever. It produced three top-10 hits in the United States and topped the charts in 25 countries. This brings us to 2023 when Eilish contributed “What Was I Made For?” to the soundtrack for Barbie. Released in July, the movie made more than a billion dollars, putting it in the top 20 of all time. Her song reached the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and garnered her another pair of Grammy nominations for Record and Song of the Year, winning the latter. Greta Gerwig, the movie’s director, showed Eilish a rough cut of the film. Billie and her brother then wrote “What Was I Made For?” The focus was on the movie’s concept of Barbie being cast out of her utopian existence and into the real world and suffering an existential crisis. SF Eilish said, “I was purely inspired by this movie and this character and the way I thought she would feel, and wrote about that.” WK Resources: SF Songfacts WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 1/3/2024; last updated 10/16/2024.