Billie Eilish has opened up to Lily Allen about how one of the British singer’s biggest hits inspired her to make a change in her life.
The Grammy winner was a guest on the most recent episode of Lily’s BBC Sounds podcast Miss Me?, which she co-hosts with presenter Miquita Oliver.
During the interview, Billie told the pair how she recently connected with old friends, after realising that all of the guests at her 20th birthday party were somehow on her payroll.
“I remember looking around the room and it was only people that I employ. And all 15 years or more older than me,” the Lunch singer explained.
Following this, one of Billie’s closest confidantes quit their job, which the singer described as “the worst thing that happened to me”, and inspired her to make more friends.
“Exactly a year ago, I reconnected with a bunch of old friends and now, I have so many friends,” she said.
“I have a crew now! I could literally cry about it. It’s been the greatest thing that’s happened to me.”
Reflecting on a recent trip to Coachella with her friends (where she made an impromptu guest appearance during Lana Del Rey’s headlining set), Billie said: “I was like, ‘Guys, I have friends and I just love you guys so much, and it’s been so long since I’ve had friends’. I cried… and it’s literally because I actually have friendship now again.”
As the conversation continued, Billie admitted that hearing a line in Lily’s break-up song Smile about getting through times “with a little help from my friends” was also a turning point.
“I used to want to cry hearing that line because I didn’t feel that way, because I didn’t have friends,” she revealed.
“And I remember thinking I want to feel that way. And I want to listen to this song that I relate to in every way and hear that line about friends and be like, ‘my friends got my through it’.”
Billie previously told Rolling Stone about the “existential crisis” she experienced at her 20th birthday during a revealing interview published in April.
“I looked around the room and every single person was an employee of mine,” she told the magazine. “I was like, ‘Oh, shit, I literally don’t have friends. I don’t have people that see me as an equal. I don’t have people that aren’t afraid of me’.”
Prior to this, Billie said she’d been “obsessed with the idea of being an anomaly, being this Billie Eilish character”.
Interestingly, Rolling Stone followed this with a discussion about Billie’s friendship with Zoe Kravitz – who has previously spoken less-than-flatteringly about her own experiences with Lily in the past.