The 2024 GRAMMYs were on Sunday, Feb 4, 2024. Song of the Year went to Billie Eilish and songwriter Fineas O’conell also known as her brother for “What was I Made For?” from the motion picture “Barbie”.
The eight nominees for this category were Lana Del Rey, Miley Cyrus, Billie Eilish, Oliva Rodrigo, Jon Batiste, Taylor Swift, SZA, and Dua Lipa.
“What Was I Made For?” song charted around the world, topping the Billboard Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart and peaking at NO.14 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song earned 5 nominations at the Grammy for Record of the Year, Best Pop Solo Performance, Best Song Written for Visual Media, and Best Music Video.
Ellish’s song was played during a heartbreaking moment in the film. A scene in the movie where Barbie the doll, has a devastating realization that she is not real, and is instead meant to be consumed.
“I was purely inspired by this movie and this character and the way I thought she would feel, and wrote about that, “ she told Zane Lowe of Apple Music.
According to CNN, she stated “I never thought about myself one time,” Ellish said, writing the Golden Globe-nominated track in a new clip of the Hollywood Reporter’s songwriter roundtable. “I was thinking about a character, and my brother was thinking about a character.”
Eilish wrote the track that speaks to finding meaning and purpose in life, with her collaborator and brother Fineas, in one night, she said.
American songwriter interview :
“We wrote in a period of time where we couldn’t have been less inspired and less creative. That day we were making stuff and we were like, ‘we’ve lost it. Why are we even doing this?’ and the first chords happen and I used to float/ now I just fall and came out and the song wrote itself.”
It fell out for about two hours, and this song took both of them out of the writer’s block they were experiencing. Although she wanted to portray how the character Barbie was feeling, when she heard the song herself days later, she realized she subconsciously put her own story into the music.
She was writing in the third person thinking about herself objectively, which made her connected to Barbie. Every single lyric is exactly how I feel. It’s about my life.”
Ellish was writing about herself, and thinking about herself.
“Looks so alive, turns out I’m not real/Just something you paid for/What was I made for,” the 21-year-old musician sings with a heartbreaking lilt.
The Barbie doll was initially a feminist icon which inspired many women to confidently pursue different career paths that are less traditional. Barbie’s feminist image “looked so alive”, but was shattered by critics who reduced the doll to a corporate product.
These lines also contain a parallel between Babrie and Billie herself in the same way that Barbie was controversially celebrated for her looks, and so was Billie. Ellish embraces this and has brought body positivity, creating a movement where people can feel more comfortable in their bodies.
In asking what she was made for, Billie, like Barbie, questions her purpose and portrayal as a role model for women. She resolved this in 2021, saying it is “not my responsibility.”
“Some people hate what I wear, some people praise it, some people use it to shame others, some people use it to shame me.”
The concept behind this is asking if her value is based only on people’s perceptions or is their opinion of her is not her responsibility.
While writing, Ellish tried to embody the essence of the life-sized doll herself in her music video on her channel. The music video showed Ellish in a bright yellow dress and high blonde ponytail very Barbie-like. Throughout the video, she pulls out miniature outfits from her different eras and experiences as an artist. They are pieces that she has previously worn hanging on a tiny rack when out of nowhere rain and a storm tear through, destroying all her efforts.
She describes “The world is falling apart as she’s trying to keep her old versions herself safe.”
Ellish states she wanted nothing more than the world to change and things to change around her.
