by Sandra Pascual
Billie Eilish was born in LA and her brother, Finneas, has produced her albums and songs. Billie and her brother grew up around music and were constantly creating art through music. Billie gained popularity in 2015 when she and Finneas released the song “Ocean Eyes” on Sound Cloud. Her purpose with this song was for her dance teacher to hear it but it ended up being the start of her career. On the internet, she’s known for her sense of style, usually baggy clothes, and you may have heard one of her most popular songs, “Bad Guy.” She’s known for many other accomplishments and songs in her career, but one that stands out to me is “What Was I Made For?”
Greta Gerwig gave Billie and Finneas the opportunity to create a song for the Barbie movie. They were shown 30 minutes of it and based on that they formulated “What Was I Made For?” It was around this time that Billie and Finneas felt uninspired, but this allowed them to pull themselves out of a weird funk with writing music.
Barbie was part of Billie Eilish’s childhood and her connection with Barbie allowed her to feel inspired to write. When writing the song, she only pulled and wrote from Barbie’s perspective. One thing about Billie’s writing is that she does it with the intention of everyone being able to relate in some way while excluding her feelings. In this particular song, she noticed this was exactly how she felt in her life. She, of course, didn’t write with the intention of it being about her, but with the timing in her life, it played out that way.
Billie has had many different phases but this phase in her music career is something I find inspirational. Everyone goes through weird funks in life, and maybe more so for specially an artist, where creativity gets lost and the image isn’t as clear. She continued to embrace her creative spark by directing her music video for “What Was I Made For?” She placed the idea on a vintage Barbie, from hair, makeup and wardrobe to illustrate the song. She did two takes and the second one was the one used for the music video.
Eilish has won 9 Grammys in her career, but two of those came from writing “What Was I Made For?” In 2024, she won Best Song Written for Visual Media, “What Was I Made For? [From Barbie The Album] and Song of the Year, “What Was I Made For? [From The Motion Picture Barbie] When you feel the spark slowly fade, you find it or it’s given. Billie was given the chance and earned 2 Grammys. Plus, for fourteen weeks, “What Was I Made For?” was #1 on the Billboard charts and streamed 4 billion times.
