Ever since Billie Eilish released her debut album in 2019, she’s been dropping hit and hit. From “Bad Guy” to “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie to her most recent chart-topper “Birds of a Feather,” the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter is clearly unstoppable.
But Eilish, 22, is not only a lyrical wizard; she’s also mastered the art of comedy. Appearing on Saturday Night Live in 2019, 2021, and again in 2023, Eilish is behind more than a few iconic sketches. And now she’s returning to the SNL stage as the Musical Guest on October 19, with Michael Keaton as the night’s Host.
Eilish has performed many of her hit songs on SNL, including “I Love You” and “Male Fantasy” with her brother, producer, and songwriting partner Finneas. This time around, one song on everyone’s radar is “Birds of a Feather” from her 2024 album Hit Me Hard and Soft.
What is Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” song about?
Eilish’s song “Birds of a Feather” is about being deeply in love with someone and loving them until the very end.
“There’s a lot of songs about dying for somebody and loving them until they die, and I thought it was really fun to lean in,” Finneas said in a lengthy video on Eilish’s YouTube channel about the making of “Birds of a Feather.”
Eilish added in the behind-the-scenes video that they wanted to “reverse” that traditional theme, which is highlighted in the song’s very first verse: “I want you to stay / ‘Til I’m in the grave / ‘Til I rot away, dead and buried / ‘Til I’m in the casket you carry.”
If the lyrics feel extreme or intense, that’s exactly what Eilish wanted to evoke. “It’s almost like someone slamming you into a wall and being like ‘You look pretty!’ and you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot!’” she explained. “That’s what I wanted the verse to do. I wanted it to feel like toxic and a little bit love-bomby.”
But if listeners felt something different, Eilish is more than OK with that. “With music, my whole thing is that it’s for the listener to decide what it means,” she said in the video. “It doesn’t matter what I wrote it about, what Finneas wrote it about, it doesn’t matter, as long as you interpret however you need to.”
The song’s title is also symbolic. The idiom “birds of a feather” refers to two people who are very alike and have similar interests. When it’s said with “flock together,” it’s implied the two are often with each other. In Eilish’s song, she puts her touch on the phrase, singing in the chorus: “Birds of a feather, we should stick together, I know.”
“Birds of a Feather” almost didn’t make it on Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft album
Eilish and Finneas spent nearly a year writing the global hit, but it nearly got cut from the tracklist.
“We overthought this sort of simple song so hard,” Finneas said in the behind-the-scenes video. “We kept getting lost in the maze on this song.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever overthought another song more,” Eilish added. “There was a period where we were considering not putting it on the album. But thank god we didn’t do that.”
