“I used to float, now I just fall down. I used to know, but I’m not sure now, what I was made for. What was I made for?” These are, of course, the tenderly bespoke opening lines of the Academy Award-nominated original song, ‘What Was I Made For?’, created by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell (also known under his mononymous artist moniker, FINNEAS). The wistful ballad was in fact made for Barbie, the femininomenon of not only the summer but the wintry Hollywood awards season.

Barbie recently became the most popular film in Letterboxd history, with more than three million watches since its July release last year. Greta Gerwig’s ode to both plastic and organic womanhood was all over our 2023 Year in Review, with a plethora of simply writing Billie’s name accompanied by multiple crying emojis. “This Barbie is crying with ‘What Was I Made For?’ by Billie Eilish in the background,” says Vit.

After scoring Grammys for Song of the Year and Best Song Written for Visual Media, the brother-sister duo (who already have an Oscar for the title song from No Time to Die) stopped by Letterboxd’s Best in Show podcast for a peek into their recording process, as well as to share which songs and films give them the same emotional validation that they’ve gifted so many others. Oh, and as you see above, we also got their Four Faves.

Below, read Eilish and O’Connell’s chat with West Coast Editor Mia Lee Vicino—in which they squeal over their shared iration for Andrew Scott’s performances in Fleabag and Sherlock, weep at the Barbie bus-stop scene and laugh about Ryan Gosling’s sublime performance as Ken.

The first question that we always like to ask our guests is: what was the first award you ever won?
Billie Eilish: Wow, great question. I used to do gymnastics for years, and I used to go to this place called The Little Gym. It’s a kids’ gymnastics place, and I was so ionate about it. You would get a medal at the end of the year or the month or something; they would give us all medals. I had so many of them, and I kept them on this little hook in my room and, oh, my God, I loved them so much. I kept them like they were diamonds. I was so proud of my gymnastics ribbons. I have them somewhere; I have a bunch of these little medals… What about you, Finneas?

FINNEAS: I did a kids’ karate class when I was six or seven, and they gave a kid each week a little special headband. Unfortunately, that became my sole focus in the karate class. As soon as I had acquired the headband, I was just trying to acquire the karate headband every week, which was the wrong [idea]. You should be in karate to learn karate. But that was the first talisman I’d been given, yeah.

Speaking of the Indie Spirits, your love of Andrew Scott, especially his performance as Moriarty in Sherlock, is very well-documented. We love him here, too. And now, you’re both nominated in acting categories at the same awards show—how cool is that, and how does that feel?
BE: It’s ridiculous. It’s crazy. It’s, like, silly. Why am I nominated also? Andrew is truly the best to ever do it. I love him so much. I’m so excited to see him. I love him. Also, Fleabag is one of the greatest shows ever created, and he is unbelievable in that show. I felt so awesome when everybody was like, “You ever heard of Andrew Scott? I found him in this new show, Fleabag,” and I being like, “Y’all—”

We knew!
BE: We’ve been knew! Andrew, I love him so much, so much. I’ve really been in love with him since I was, like, ten.

No, me, too. The amount of times I’ve typed “Moriarty pool scene BBC Sherlock” into YouTube is unreal.
BE: Oh, bro, I have that shit memorized. I literally held all my friends hostage the other day at three in the morning and forced them to watch that entire scene and then the rooftop scene.

Finneas, you’re a fan, too—come on, get in here!
F: I put Billie onto Sherlock!

BE: He did.

F: I love Sherlock. Yeah, [Scott’s] so great in it. And that was the first thing I’d ever seen Benedict Cumberbatch in. So much fun.

F: I’m not trying to disparage myself, but I think, really, I have a great appreciation for directing and directors. I love it, but it is not the thing that calls to me the way that writing does or performing does. So anytime Billie directs anything, I will participate, but I definitely am not ever going to be like, “What about me? When can I direct?” I don’t want to direct.

So we’ve dipped our toes into Barbie Land; now we can fully dive in. We’ve read and heard and loved the story about how you created ‘What Was I Made For?’, but we want to go behind the curtain to learn about the craft itself. I want to talk more about your recording process and the ad-libbing aspect of that song.
BE: Yeah, I’ve talked about this a little bit, but nobody really asks about it, and I find that frustrating. Something I find frustrating in life and in this world is that everybody wants to know about the song, but they don’t really want to know about the song. They want to know about how it came to be and “What was the inspiration?” and “Where were you when you wrote it?”

But I love talking about the actual making of it and the lyrics and the recording process and the producing and the editing and the comping vocals. That is the stuff that we spend all our time doing. You only spend a little amount of time getting inspired, and then you do it. So let’s talk about doing it.

Vocals are my thing. I sing, and that’s the thing I like doing. Singing is the reason I do any of this. I love singing more than anything. I don’t love writing, to be honest. I find it very frustrating, and I find it hard and tedious. I love having written stuff, I love having songs, and I love feeling good about something I wrote, but I don’t like the process of it.

But I sure love to sing, and I love working on music, and I love working on music with Finneas. And part of that is doing a lot of vocals and a lot of backing vocals and ad-libs and harmonies and layering, and that’s the stuff that I spend the most of my time on, and nobody ever really asks about it, which is so interesting to me.

I mean, ad-libs are one of my favorite things in music. Some of my favorite songs wouldn’t be my favorite songs if it weren’t for the ad-libs and the harmonies and the backing vocals and the melodies. And yeah, I think ‘What Was I Made For?’, as with our other songs, is heavy on the BVs. Sometimes you have to really listen closely to hear them, and I think that’s really special. I feel that’s my favorite part of making music, is I go, “Ad-lib time!” and I sit there, and I make stuff up, and I pick the stuff that’s really good and delete the stuff that’s bad. It’s a very satisfying process for me.

The other one is that at one point I just went, “Woo!” and then I verb it out, and it’s way in the background, but she says, “Takin’ a drive,” and you hear this kind of echo of a thing, and it’s just me going, “Woo!” That was fun.

Woo! Billie, we talked a little bit about lyrics, and I know you were saying that you find writing very, very hard, but the lyrics in this song are so incredible. I am personally a major lyrics appreciator, and the line that really resonated with me was, “When did it end? All the enjoyment. I’m sad again; don’t tell my boyfriend.” Is there a song or a film for you two that gives you the sense of emotional validation that your song has given so many disillusioned people?
BE: Boy, I mean, yeah, so many. Honestly, watching Barbie, I felt that way. You don’t go into watching a movie about a doll and think, “I’m going to really relate to this. I’m going to really feel like I’m her,” at all. I think that everyone was pleasantly surprised that we all could relate to Barbie and this movie about this feeling of not knowing what the hell we’re doing here and what the future brings or is going to bring, and feeling like we don’t know what our purpose is. I think we’ve all felt that always, or, not always, but all of us have felt that at a time in our lives.

God, a song that makes me feel like that… I mean, that’s what music is for. I think that’s why we love music so much, is how it makes you feel seen and heard, and they wrote it for you. The amount of songs that I’ve listened to and been like, “Wow. It’s as if I had this song commissioned for me. Someone was writing about my life, and here it is.” Finneas, do you have one off the top of your head while I think?

F: Growing up, there was a period of time where I felt that way about a song called ‘Best of You’ by The Foo Fighters. It’s a really beautiful song. The last two years, there’s a movie called Cha Cha Real Smooth by a filmmaker named Cooper Raiff.

BE: So good.

F: That character—and actually [also in] his other film Shithouse—he has a closeness with his mom that I found really beautiful and touching. It was not dissimilar to Billie and my closeness with our mom. I felt validated by that.

BE: You know what? We used to listen to The Beatles, and Finneas and I have always talked about how, when we were kids, we would listen to The Beatles and have a horrible stomachache, just filled with anxiety and guilt and philosophical, whatever the fuck. The Beatles somehow get you in this place, even as a child, where you’re like, “Oh, my God, the world and existing and love.” I listening to ‘Help!’ and being just horribly sick to my stomach.

BE: I hearing that song and being like, “Oh, my God, did I write this in my own head?” And then Imogen Heap actually wrote it. I singing that song all the time thinking that. Same with—I loved ‘Not About Angels’ [by Birdy]. I thought that was the best song in the world.

I loved ‘Bad Religion’ [by Frank Ocean]. I learning ‘Bad Religion’ on the piano, and I would just sing that over and over and over and just [singing]. Oh, God, that song gets me. I mean, it’s so much music. Finneas and I are—if there’s one thing that we are, it’s music fans and lovers and listeners, and we could talk about music forever and ever and ever.

F: Billie let me be on the first season of her radio show on Apple Music, and we did the first season together, and then she had the second season with our dad. I say this with no authority, but it’s time to do another one. Billie and I are so invested in other people’s music and putting together music that we like playing; it’s too much fun.

BE: When we have time again, we’ll make another one.

For my final question… Because your song is both so devastating but also very hopeful, which scene or moment from Barbie moved you the most, and which made you laugh the most? My answers are the bus-stop scene and then Gosling’s “Sublime!”
BE: Yeah, the bus-stop scene had me in tears for sure. Almost even maybe more than the montage scene, except then once the song was also in the montage scene, I was bawling my eyes out. But yeah, the bus-stop scene really got me the first time we saw it, and then especially when we saw it for real, because my voice is in the background of that one, which is amazing. Yeah, that one had me crying. And also America [Ferrara]’s speech really was amazing.

Then the funniest, the hardest I laughed; Finneas and I really thought Ryan’s laugh was so… [imitates Ken’s laugh]. The first time we saw that, it was like, “Oh, wow, that’s a really good one.” I thought that was really funny.

F: The most recent time I saw it, when Barbie Margot is crying and saying, “I don’t feel pretty; I don’t feel special.” That’s devastating. Then I was really cracked-up by Ryan’s Ken thinking that Century City is the greatest place on earth, and, “How do I make Barbie Land more like Century City?”

And we’re LA people, so we know that that’s definitely not what we should be doing.
F: Mia, I feel like we’re kindred spirits.