Following the release of Billie Eilish’s official video for the James Bond theme song “No Time to Die,” the singer and her brother Finneas appeared on Monday night’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to perform the track.
There, the pair also discussed how the song came together. “It was a crazy, surreal experience,” Eilish said. “I don’t remember when it all kind of was real, but I do know for many years that we wanted to write a Bond song. Not even like we thought we could—it was just more like a fantasy, like a complete fantasy. … But I think it was last summer-ish. It started being a topic of discussion and not a fantasy, and it was very insane to us.”
She continued, “We were kind of stuck the first few days we tried to work on it. It was a lot of pressure, it was a fucking Bond song. So we were pretty stumped and then there was just one day where Finneas was playing on the piano and he just played this one melody and it was the one.”
Finneas produced the song alongside Stephen Lipson. Eilish has also become the youngest artist in history to write and record a Bond theme song.
Eilish also shared Alicia Keys’ advice for her after the young singer swept the 2019 Grammy Awards: “Alicia Keys called me and she wanted to congratulate me,” Eilish explained. “And she basically said on the phone, which is something that I hold so dear to me ‘cause she won a billion Grammys when she was really young—her first Grammys I think. She was like, ‘I just wanted to say don’t be embarrassed for being dope.’ So good.”
While No Time to Die was originally slated to arrive in November, it has now been pushed back to a April 2, 2021 release.
