Billie Eilish is ‘nervous and very excited’ about attending Oscars as a nominee alongside brother

Billie Eilish admits she is ‘nervous and very excited’ about attending the Academy Awards as a nominee alongside her brother Finneaas O’Connell.

The superstar siblings, who received a nod for their title track from James Bond film No Time To Die, are favorited to win the competitive category. 

‘Oh, yeah, we’ll be there, definitely. We’re very nervous and very excited,’ the 20-year-old Bad Guy hitmaker told The Times’ Saturday Review ahead of the show next week. 

The pair had ‘no hesitation’ when they were first asked to produce a song for the franchise, but they imposed a lot of ‘rules’ on themselves when writing the track. 

‘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 explained.  

She continued: ‘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. 

Big night: The superstar siblings, who received a nod for their title track from James Bond film No Time To Die, are favorited to win the category; seen in September 2021

‘Oh, yeah, we’ll be there, definitely. We’re very nervous and very excited,’ the 20-year-old Bad Guy hitmaker told The Times’ Saturday Review ahead of the show next week (pictured in February)

‘We had a lot of our rules in mind for the song, and a long list of things that we wanted to achieve,’ the seven-time Grammy winner went on.

The my future singer noted she and O’Connell, 24, knew the track they wanted to make ‘had to have a strong melody’ and they ‘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,’ she reflected. 

Musically gifted: The pair had ‘no hesitation’ when they were first asked to produce a song for the franchise, but they imposed a lot of ‘rules’ on themselves when writing the track; seen in December 2021

But the pair refused to listen to old Bond themes because they didn’t want to ‘accidentally copy’ a track that had gone before.  

‘We felt a huge sense of responsibility,’ the Ocean Eyes crooner stressed.

She also said them put ‘a lot of pressure’ on themselves’ even though ‘nobody’ else was as they aimed to pay respect to the beloved franchise.  

Completely original: The musicians made a point not to listen to past films’ soundtracks to prevent themselves from ‘accidentally’ replicating another artist’s work; seen in 2019

‘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. 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***, this already exists.” We needed to check that it hadn’t been done before,’ Eilish told the outlet. 

The musicians made a point not to listen to past films’ soundtracks to prevent themselves from ‘accidentally’ replicating another artist’s work. 

‘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,’ she clarified.

Eilish concluded: ‘We already knew what the others sounded like, and we already knew what we wanted.’

Their song will be competing against Beyonce’s hit Be Alive (King Richard), Lin-Manuel Miranda’s song Dos Oruguitas from Encanto, Diane Warren’s Somehow You Do (Four Good Days) and Van Morrison’s Down To Joy (Belfast) 

‘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,’ she clarified