Billie Eilish, along with her brother Finneas, has written some of the most beloved songs of the past few years. However, if you ask her, as Apple Music’s Zane Lowe just did in a new interview today, songwriting really isn’t her strongest skill, at least not as strong as her abilities as a performer.
The conversation spawned from Eilish praising Finneas’ writing skill/habits and comparing them to her own, saying:
“Dude, Finneas is so annoying. Finneas can make… Finneas can work anytime. The dude doesn’t get a break, like, within himself. He doesn’t need it. For me, I kind of go through phases of feeling really creative and actually getting stuff done, and then go through phases of absolutely nothing at all, musically. The creativity works in other ways, but musically, Finneas is just… the guy can write so fast and so well and so often and constant. It’s his way of expressing himself and it’s really kind of his only way, and so I think that’s a big part of it. For me, I have a lot of ways of expressing myself that I find myself good at, and maybe better at, and feel really confident at. And for Finneas, songwriting is just, like, his tool.”
Lowe then asked if Eilish feels she’s better at expressing herself through means other than songwriting and she replied, “Yes [laughs]. Absolutely!” Lowe asked for an example and Eilish responded, “I feel like I’m a better performer than a writer. I feel like maybe singing is more my… like I feel more… I don’t know.”
After Lowe pushed back on Eilish perhaps selling her songwriting abilities short, Eilish continued, “I go through these many, many months where I’m like, ‘I don’t write songs, I haven’t written songs in a long time.’ And then I’ll sit down and I’ll write.”
Check out the full interview above.
Source: https://uproxx.com/pop/billie-eilish-better-performing-songwriting/
