When we first pressed play on Billie Eilish’s ‘Happier Than Ever’ in 2021, we were thinking, “yay, some happy Billie moments! It’s what she deserves!” Then she proceeded to rip our hearts right out of our chests and stomp on them. It seems like that Billie is back with a vengeance, because she’s given us not one, but TWO incredible new songs to enjoy and sob to!
Therapists everywhere are about to owe Billie some royalties or a commission or something, because ‘The 30th’ and ‘TV,’ the two songs that make up her Guitar Songs EP, are wreaking absolute havoc on our feelings. Sometimes you just need a good emotional moment to let it all out, and Billie’s here for the perfect soundtrack. Shall we take a closer look at the songs?
‘TV’
Let’s kick off our crying session with the EP’s first song, ‘TV,’ which Billie previously gave us a taste of during her festival run earlier this year. Part of why we got a preview of that song so early was because of Harry Styles – thank you, Harry! Billie told Apple Music that his Coachella performance of ‘Boyfriends’ before its official release stood out to her, because, “It’s really vulnerable to play a song that is not out that is that vulnerable to you, and that’s what I wanted to do. I missed doing that.”
‘TV’ draws from a similar place as Billie’s smash ‘Happier Than Ever,’ detailing a questionably committed partner and even similar situations of isolation as the ones that come up on ‘HTE.’ But the tears the song brews up in us aren’t all because of sadness – she added screams from the crowd in the outro as a thank you to the fans who embraced the song so much when she first performed it live!
FINNEAS and I had talked about we want to be making music and we just haven’t had any time to make music and we’re on tour and it’s busy and this and that. So we made a little schedule. We were like, ‘Okay, well, let’s see if we make anything if we work today.’ But when you’re on the road and especially the schedule that we had, it was really tough. But we tried, and we ended up writing the, I think, first verse and the chorus… We wrote the first verse a couple months ago, many months ago now, and it was… We come into my green room, and I’m like, ‘Laura, listen to this song we just wrote,’ and it was just the verse. It was just the first verse. I play it, and [my assistant] Laura literally is sitting there like this, and I was like, ‘But it’s fictional. It’s just fictional. It’s not anything real. Don’t worry about it.’ Then a couple months went by, and things changed, and then we wrote the rest of the song.
Billie Eilish to Apple Music
‘The 30th’
After the triumphant sing-along of ‘TV,’ we’re back to some melancholy vibes with ‘The 30th,’ a look back at a scary situation someone Billie loves faced back in 2021. She doesn’t give many details, but the song touches on a car wreck and Billie’s gratitude that it wasn’t worse than it truly was. The bridge mentions some details that could’ve made the situation a lot tougher, but Billie thankfully insists, “you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive,” at the end of it.
We wrote that on December 30th, and that was actually the first song that we had written since Happier Than Ever. That’s why it’s called ‘The 30th’ because something happened on November 30th and it had just been the most indescribable thing to have to witness and experience. I had been writing down all these thoughts that I was having. I was with FINNEAS, and I was like, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you were planning on doing, but we need to write this song about this right now,’ and we did.
Billie Eilish to Apple Music
The Release
Billie is the latest musical darling to try her hand at a surprise drop, and we’re so glad she’s joined that club because Guitar Songs is such a treat! It delivered just what we needed in the dog days of summer, and these two songs will definitely remain as gems in her discography.
The whole thing with music, and especially when you get bigger, is every drop is this big deal of you got to send it in five months before you want it to come out because you have to get finals ready and you have to set a date and you have to shoot the video and you have to do the press for it and you have to do a shoot for it and you have to do a promo for it and you have to get the artwork and you have to do this and that and this and that, which is all fine, but it’s been so long since I’ve had music that we make and then it’s out. You know what I mean? That was what I wanted. I consciously was like, ‘I want to go back to the way it was at the beginning.’
Billie Eilish to Apple Music
What do you think of Billie Eilish’s Guitar Songs EP? Which track is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below, or hit us up on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! And for more Billie content, because we all need more Billie in our lives, click here.
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