Billie Eilish has said in multiple interviews that when she and FINNEAS agreed to write their newly Oscar-nominated Barbie song, “What Was I Made For?,” she was miserable and depressed and they both had writer’s block. But producer Mark Ronson says that when he met with the siblings about writing the song, they didn’t mention any of that.
“I mean, it’s funny reading that in interviews after, ’cause of course, we didn’t know that,” Ronson told ABC Audio. “Y’know, we’d had these Zooms with Greta [Gerwig] and Billie, and FINNEAS and Greta had met before and they were all mutual fans and I was just meeting with them for the first time.”
“They’re like, ‘Yeah, cool. We’re excited to write a song for the thing,'” he recalls.
He laughs, “And y’know, I’ve seen the interviews now where they’re like, ‘Yeah, we had writer’s block. We had no intention. We just wanted to see the new Greta Gerwig film.'”
But when they watched the movie, Billie and FINNEAS were evidently affected enough to create “What Was I Made For?” In fact, when they won Best Original Song at the Golden Globes, Billie said, “Writing that song kind of saved me a little bit.” And at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, she said of watching Barbie, “I felt so seen. And I did not expect that.”
“They must have been so inspired, like everybody who … saw pieces of this film and then wrote a song,” Ronson said. “Whether it was Karol G or Charlie XCX or whoever. Because the movie is just like imbued with so much emotion.”
“So we got a demo like a week later, and it was just like heartrending. It was so wonderful.”
The Oscars air March 10 on ABC.
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