Unbreakable bond: how Billie Eilish wrote her way to an Oscar nomination
American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish had been ‘subconsciously and consciously’ trying to write a Bond theme her whole life. Then it happened.
Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, had a singular vision when they set out to compose No Time to Die: they were simply trying to write the best James Bond song they could.
“We felt a huge sense of responsibility,” Eilish says. “We put ourselves under a lot of pressure because we wanted to.Nobody put the pressure on us. We paid respect. We loved Bond and we are big fans of the franchise, and we wanted to do it justice. We didn’t want to make a trashy, not-James Bond song.”
Their theme song for No Time to Die, the final 007 outing for Daniel Craig, has been nominated for an Academy award, to be decided at what is shaping to be the most anticipated ceremony in years. Covid is on the way out, people are flocking back to cinemas and there is a desire not only to go out but also to celebrate going out. Parties are back, albeit apologetically given recent events, and there is no bigger party than the Oscars.
The 94th Oscars will be broadcast live on March 28 (AEDT), hosted by Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes. Lupita Nyong’o, Naomi Scott and last year’s best supporting actor winner, Daniel Kaluuya, will present awards at the Dolby Theatre, alongside Lady Gaga, Zoe Kravitz and Kevin Costner. John Travolta, Mila Kunis and Wesley Snipes are among the latest celebrities added to the Oscars telecast.
Eilish and O’Connell will be in attendance, and when Review speaks to them in subzero Detroit,they can’t contain their elation at the prospect. Even though the song is two years old, released in 2020 – 18 months before the film eventually opened – it is the odds-on favourite to pick up the award. “Oh, yeah, we’ll be there, definitely,” Eilish, 20. “We’re very nervous and very excited.”
When they started writing the song they had read only the first 23 pages of the script, so in many senses they were in the dark, writing about James Bond rather than talking to the movie itself. When they went into the studio to orchestrate the song with composer Hans Zimmer and producer Steve Mazzaro, they could then respond to the drama and sensitivities of the plot.
“It’s a hard thing when you write a Bond theme because when you come up with a good melody, your immediate instinct is, ‘F..k, this already exists.’ We needed to check that it hadn’t been done before,” Eilish says.
“We didn’t go back and listen to all the soundtracks – we didn’t want to then accidentally copy something. If you’re looking for inspiration from something, all you’re going to do is think: ‘Oh that’s really cool, let’s redo that.’ And we didn’t want to do that. What we did want to do is make an ode to the movies.
“We already knew what the others sounded like, and we already knew what we wanted.” Haunting, unsettling and deliberately off-kilter, their theme song for No Time to Die is a more than fitting addition to the series. While it sounds contemporary, it is graciously respectful, a gorgeous evocation of the brand. And it makes Madonna’s Die Another Day sound even more like the Auto-Tuned bilge we all thought it was.
At the time of the new song’s release, Eilish said: “Subconsciously and consciously we’ve been trying to write a Bond theme our whole lives.”
The siblings’ respect for the Bond franchise is no joke. This project was not something they entered into lightly.
“When we were asked to do the song there was no hesitation, as it was one of the things we really wanted to do,” Eilish says. “You often have reservations about things you’re asked to do, but this was one of the only things we’ve ever been asked to do that we were, like, 100 per cent ‘Yes, we want to do this.’ There was not one ounce of hesitation, in either mine or Finneas’s head at the time.
“We had a lot of our rules in mind for the song and a long list of things that we wanted to achieve. It had to have a strong melody and we wanted to make the title of the movie the hook. It needed to have a big moment, it had to have dynamics and it needed to feel very Bond-like while also feeling like me. And it couldn’t stray from either.”
Eilish has been such a phenomenon since her 2019 breakthrough single, Bad Guy, at the age of 17, that it’s easier to think of her as a media construction rather than the complex artist she is. Having defined herself and the generation she supposedly was espousing with a quirky, off-grid aesthetic, she and O’Connell set about reinventing pop with a series of urgent, knowing and uber-contemporary records that won her critical acclaim and mass success. Lauded for her keen intelligence as well as a seemingly innate ability to use the media to her advantage, she became, in 2020, the youngest person and first woman to win the four main Grammy categories – best new artist, record of the year, song of the year and album of the year – in the same year.
Since then she has been criticised for exploring her sexuality in the pages of a fashion magazine (as though no one had done that before), she has been embroiled in an overhyped racial-slur story and she got into a spat with Kanye West (easily done) over something she apparently said about rapper Travis Scott. Oh, and she launched her own eau de parfum.
Eilish isn’t just famous, she is talented. As is her brother. This is evident in her remarkable Bond theme, a song for the ages that is the equal of classic 007 themes such as Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger or Tom Jones’s Thunderball. Even Paul McCartney, who wrote and recorded his own Bond classic, Live and Let Die, is a fan. He says Eilish is “very special”. They are two of the headliners at Glastonbury this year – McCartney will have just turned 80, Eilish will still be 20.
When Eilish and O’Connell, 24, were writing the song, it wasn’t only the legacy of the franchise that concerned them, it was its latent Britishness. “One of the things that I was initially worried about was the fact that we’re not from the UK and maybe people wished we were because this franchise is so British,” Eilish says. “I didn’t want to disrespect that. That was a big thing for us, which meant that it was so important that people in Britain liked it. It had to feel like Bond, it had to be genuine.”
O’Connell agrees: “To us, it wasn’t so much about trying to make the song sound British as about thinking from the perspective of the character. We had some help from Johnny Marr, which really helped. If I had been tasked with doing the orchestral arrangement for this song I would have been trying to copy Hans Zimmer, and if I had been tasked with doing the guitar part for the song I would have been trying to copy Johnny Marr. So it was a great honour to work with those guys.”
The siblings rewatched all Craig’s Bond movies when they were commissioned.
“A big thing was acknowledging that this was going to be Daniel Craig’s last Bond movie,” Eilish says. “And that put even more pressure on us. We really wanted him to like it and it to pay respect to his Bond period. It’s a long time and it’s a big deal for him. It’s a lot of work that he’s put in. It was a priority for us to respect that.
“What I thought was really nice was that when we were in London making the record, and dealing with [Bond producer] Barbara Broccoli and Hans and Steve and everyone involved in the movie, you could tell that Daniel was involved in everything.
“He really cared about this movie and that made it even more intimidating for us.”
And who is her favourite Bond? “Daniel Craig is my favourite Bond for sure. We grew up on him. That was our generation, our Bond. Our guy.”
It’s no surprise her favourite Bond theme isn’t any of the John Barry ones. It’s none of the Bassey classics (she did three, Diamonds are Forever, Moonraker and Goldfinger), or those by A-ha, Lulu, Rita Coolidge, Carly Simon, Sheryl Crow, Tina Turner, Gladys Knight, Duran Duran, Nancy Sinatra or Louis Armstrong.
“My favourite Bond theme is Skyfall by Adele, which is because it was the first Bond film I was really aware of. I was, like, 10 years old when that movie came out; that was my first step into the world of Bond. When I first saw the trailer, I just thought, ‘This movie is so cool.’
“I don’t think of Bond as only a British phenomenon, but I always tried to be aware of the people that think of the franchise as part of their culture. It comes from where they are from, it talks about what they talk about, and the films are very culturally English. I don’t think it’s weird that people from the US like these films because they are so British, but I wanted to make sure that the Brits were heard and seen in the song. It had to feel British. I think about all the things I’ve always loved in the Bond movies, and I wanted to preserve those things, as in a sense James Bond has to stay that way forever.
“I wondered how I would feel if someone else did something that was not even in the same ballpark as Bond. Would that bother me? Bond is so f..king famous, and so loved, and has been for so long, that it’s a really big deal to please Bond fans. I didn’t put that on the back burner, that was a really big thing. I wanted people to be pleased.
“I didn’t want to be, ‘F..k that, I’m going to do it my way.’ I wanted people to feel happy and excited about it, even if they weren’t a fan necessarily.”
Now that Craig has stepped down, the noise about his potential replacement has become almost deafening, with constant media speculation about who may step into Bond’s bench-made oxfords. Or indeed, maybe a different pair of shoes altogether.
Does Eilish think the next 007 should be a woman?
“F..k yeah. I don’t know what they’re planning, but it would be a great idea. I think what was really cool about No Time to Die is that Bond was replaced by a scary, dope 007 who’s just as cool, and she’s a woman. I thought that was a really cool move. I would like to see the movie of Lashana Lynch as Bond. I think that would be really cool. A female Bond. Unexpected. Just like No Time to Die.”
The 94th Academy Awards will be broadcast on Channel 7 on March 28.
The Times
Nicola Dove