Billie Eilish drops ‘Guitar Songs’ with two surprise tracks ‘TV’ and ‘The 30th’
Billie Eilish has released a two-track collection called ‘Guitar Songs’ featuring ‘TV’ and ‘The 30th’. Listen to both new songs below.
Eilish previously premiered ‘TV’ live during her Manchester gig last month where she performed the acoustic track on stage with her brother Finneas.
“Finneas and I really wanted these to be yours as soon as possible,” she told fans of the surprise release. “So here they are!! Performing ‘TV’ on tour was such a highlight for us too, so we took the audio from the first night we played it in Manchester and put it in the song.
Billie added: “I get shivers every time I hear it. Hope you love the songs and thank you for letting us share our music with you.”
Speaking to Apple Music today, Eilish said she wrote the “first verse and the chorus” of ‘TV’ a couple of months ago with Finneas. She also discussed the lyrics of the track, where she sings “The internet is going wild / while they’re overturning Roe v. Wade”. The pop star has spoken out against anti-abortion laws in the past.
“We wrote that line a few weeks before it was officially overturned,” she said. “It was a placeholder of doom. I mean, it was the day of Glastonbury that it happened, and I was sitting in the… We were at this house, and I was sitting with the dogs in the grass.
Eilish continued: “My mom came out, and she just stood there, and she went, ‘They overturned it.’ We all were just like… God, it was like a curtain of doom. I mean, there was almost no even reaction. I had this, I guess, now that I think about it, unrealistic hope that that wouldn’t happen.”
She also talked about ‘The 30th’ sharing that it was the first song they’d written since ‘Happier Than Ever’.
“That’s why it’s called ‘The 30th’,” Billie said. “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, and that was the first song we wrote since ‘Happier Than Ever’.”
Eilish also shared her plans for future music, adding that she’s “going to hopefully make another album in the next year.”
Meanwhile, in June Eilish became Glastonbury Festival’s youngest ever headliner.
She told NME in a recent Big Read cover story that she was initially unfazed about playing the legendary festival. The recently broadcast BBC documentary Glastonbury: 50 Years and Counting depicts her assessing the field – she’s befuddled at the lush greenery and semi-jokes: “It’s all empty, dude. There’s nothing there. This is what all the fuss is about?”
But, as NME writer Thomas Smith noted, “today she’d like to rectify her earlier apprehension: she categorically does get it now.”
“I felt so stupid and ignorant, because if I was someone who thought of Glastonbury as the biggest deal ever, and then someone was to headline it who had no idea about it, I’d be like, “Man, what the fuck’?,” she said from her London hotel a week before her headline set.
“I feel I owe it to everyone to put on a good show because of that. I’m so honoured to be a part of it.”