What's The Real Meaning Of What Was I Made For By Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made For," co-written with her brother Finneas O'Connell, has been everywhere from social media to award shows for months. The duo's song has earned accolades including a Golden Globe for Best Original Song, as well as Grammy and Oscar Award nominations, among others. It's no surprise — anyone who knows the sibling songwriter powerhouse knows that their music runs deep. In 2019, Billie and Finneas sat down with Variety to talk about their work, and while they didn't necessarily know where their careers were headed, they knew how their songs came to life.
"The way that we tried to approach every piece of music is, if the song had a brain, it would be aware of its catalog," Finneas told the outlet. "Like, the ['When We All Fall Asleep'] album knew that the ['Don't Smile at Me'] EP and those other songs exist. They're referential in certain ways: There are lines in 'Crown' about 'Ocean Eyes'; 'Ilomilo' references 'Bury a Friend,' which references 'Xanny.' It's a little bit like a book series."
These two songwriters, who started out writing songs on a bedroom floor, have crafted an earworm that has a stranglehold on many of us. Not counting how many viewers heard the song in the "Barbie" movie, the music video alone has over 103 million views on YouTube. How did this poignant piece of music come to be?
Billie and Finneas wrote it in just a few hours
The song "What Was I Made For" only took Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell a few hours to hammer out, Billie told Allure. Since the explosion of the song and the "Barbie" movie it's a part of, it's special in a devastating sort of way to see how people relate to it. "What Was I Made For" truly captures what it's like, particularly for women, to grow up in a world that tells you you aren't good enough. That's demonstrated in lyrics like "I used to float, now I just fall down/I used to know but I'm not sure now" and "When did it end? All the enjoyment/I'm sad again, don't tell my boyfriend/It's not what he's made for."
"We wrote most of the song without thinking about ourselves and our own lives, but thinking about this character we were inspired by," Billie told Allure. "A couple of days went by, and I realized it was about me. It's everything I feel. And it's not just me — everyone feels like that, eventually." She described the song as something that had been living inside her for years, wanting to escape. We can see a lot of that tenderness even in a song this simple that has touched the lives of so many people who can relate to the conflicts of growing up.
Billie Eilish may become youngest two-time Oscar winner
Since Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell won their first Oscar in 2022 for "No Time to Die," their "What Was I Made For" nomination could make history. According to Forbes, if they take home their second Best Original Song Oscar in 2024, Billie will become the youngest two-time winner in the award's history at the age of 22.
After receiving her second Oscar nomination on January 23, 2024, Billie took to Instagram to share her gratitude. In an image statement on behalf of herself and her brother/co-writer Finneas, the duo wrote in part, "We are so incredibly honored to receive a nomination for 'What Was I Made For?' As lifelong fans of film, music in film and the Academy Awards, this means everything to us." They also thanked the cast and crew of the "Barbie" film, in particular Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach, and Margot Robbie, among others.