Billie Eilish Didn’t Realize One of Her Favorite Childhood Songs Was by Taylor Swift
“I thought it was so cool and mean. I just loved it.”
Any Billie Eilish fan knows that in Billie’s younger years, the superstar musician was a diehard Belieber, but she was also pretty into Taylor Swift — even if she didn’t know it at the time.
As noted by Billboard, Billie shared her Swiftie status on a recent episode of her Apple Music show, me & dad radio, which costars her father, Patrick O’Connell. The two curated a playlist of old favorites, including the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, and Taylor’s 2006 song “Picture to Burn,” from her debut album.
“I used to love this song when I was, like, four — no, probably older than that. Probably, like, six,” Billie said. “It’s crazy. It’s very country. When I listen to it now, I’m like, ‘Wow, I totally didn’t realize how country this was.’ But I loved this song back then because I thought it was so bad*ss. I thought it was so cool and mean. I just loved it.”
But Billie didn’t know the voice behind one of her childhood favorites, until recently: “I actually didn’t know it was Taylor Swift until this year,” she revealed. She also wasn’t clear on the message of the song. “I didn’t understand at all what a ‘picture to burn’ meant. The only word ‘burn’ that I knew, that I thought that she meant, was, like, when you burn a CD.”
“Taylor Swift had these wonderful crossover country-pop songs that had these great stories to tell,” Billie’s dad said, and “Picture to Burn” is certainly a great example of one those early story-songs, where Taylor rages against an ex who has done her wrong. The track is definitely country, with a twangy chorus of fiddles, guitars, and a Southern lilt in Taylor’s voice — very common in Taylor’s earlier discography, but absent from her current pop vibe.
Billie and Taylor have shared the love before, and the admiration between the two musicians is obvious. At the Billboard Awards, Billie name-dropped Taylor in her Woman of the Year speech and thanked her for inspiring remarks she’d made at a prior ceremony, saying that Taylor “took care of me.” Taylor, in turn, called out Billie as an influential female pop artist. Billie may not have known one of her childhood fave songs was written by Taylor, but she does now, and we’d love to hear the two team up for a cover of the ’06 classic.
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