Billie Eilish just shared a video (above) that superfans are going to eat up: It’s a 16-minute video made in partnership with American Express, in which she and Finneas break down specifics of Hit Me Hard And Soft hit “Birds Of A Feather,” digging deep into songwriting, production, singing, lyrics, and more. Emerging from this is one particularly interesting piece of information that was news to even Eilish herself.
At about ten minutes into the video, Finneas laughingly brings up a production element that can only be heard when closely listening to the song’s second verse. He plays the heavily manipulated audio (a “vocal chop,” as Eilish calls is), and Eilish asks Finneas if he has the original sound from which that came. He did and he played it, and it was Eilish singing, “’cause the stranger.” Eilish was left mouth agape when she realized that sample came from their 2021 Happier Than Ever song “Getting Older.”
“I didn’t even know that,” she exclaimed through laughter.
This sort of thing isn’t foreign to Finneas’ production style. In a 2020 appearance on The Tonight Show, for instance, Finneas revealed he worked the sound of an Australian crosswalk light into “Bad Guy,” a fact that left Questlove in shock.
Check out the video above.