Billie Eilish admits she is “nervous and very excited” to be an Oscar nominee alongside her brother Finneas O’Connell.
The superstar siblings, recognized for their theme song from the James Bond film No Time To Die, are favorites to win the competition category.
“Oh yes, we will definitely be there. We’re very nervous and very excited,” the 20-year-old Bad Guy hitmaker told The Times’ Saturday Review ahead of next week’s show.
Preferred to win: Billie Eilish admits she is “nervous and very excited” to attend the Oscars alongside her brother Finneas O’Connell as a nominee; seen earlier this month
The couple had “no hesitation” when they were first asked to produce a song for the franchise, but they set themselves a lot of “rules” when writing the track.
“When we were asked to do the song, there was no hesitation because it was one of the things we really wanted to do,” Eilish explained.
She continued, “You often have reservations about things you’re asked to do, but this was one of the few things we’ve ever been asked to do that we’re 100 percent like, ‘Yes, we want to do this.’ There was no hesitation then, either in my mind or in Finneas’s.
Big night: The superstar siblings, recognized for their theme song from the James Bond film No Time To Die, are favorites to win the category; Seen Sep 2021
“Oh yes, we will definitely be there. We’re very nervous and very excited,” the 20-year-old Bad Guy hitmaker told The Times’ Saturday Review ahead of next week’s show (pictured in February).
“We had a lot of our rules for the song in mind and a long list of things we wanted to achieve,” the seven-time Grammy winner continued.
The my future singer noted that she and O’Connell, 24, knew the track they wanted to make “had to have a strong melody” and they “wanted to make the film’s title a hook.”
“It had to have a big moment, it had to have momentum, and it had to feel very much like Bond and feel like me at the same time. And it couldn’t deviate from that either,” she mused.
Musically gifted: The pair had “no hesitation” when they were first asked to produce a song for the franchise, but they set themselves a lot of “rules” when writing the track; Seen December 2021
But the pair refused to listen to old Bond themes because they didn’t want to “accidentally” copy a track that was there before.
“We felt very responsible,” said the Ocean Eyes singer.
She also said they put “a lot of pressure” on themselves, although “nobody” else seemed like they wanted to show respect to the beloved franchise.
Totally original: the musicians were careful not to listen to the soundtracks of past films to avoid “accidentally” imitating another artist’s work; seen in 2019
“We loved Bond and we’re big fans of the franchise and we wanted to do him justice. We didn’t want to do a trashy, non-James Bond song. It’s a tricky thing when you’re writing a Bond theme, because when you come up with a good tune, your immediate instinct is, “F***, that already exists.” We had to check that this hadn’t happened before was,” Eilish told the outlet.
The musicians were careful not to listen to the soundtracks of previous films to avoid “accidentally” imitating another artist’s work.
“When you’re looking for inspiration from something, you’re just like, ‘Oh, that’s really cool, let’s repeat that.’ And we didn’t want that. What we wanted to do is make an ode to the films,” she clarified.
Eilish concluded, “We already knew what the others sounded like and we already knew what we wanted.”
Her song will compete against Beyonce’s hit Be Alive (King Richard), Lin-Manuel Miranda’s song Dos Oruguitas from Encanto, Diane Warren’s Somehow You Do (Four Good Days) and Van Morrison’s Down To Joy (Belfast).
“If you’re looking for inspiration from something, you’re just going to think, ‘Oh, that’s really cool, let’s repeat that.’ And we didn’t want that. What we wanted to do is make an ode to the films,” she clarified