-Our first guest tonight is a multi-Grammy-Award winning
musician whose song, "No Time To Die"
was recently nominated for an Academy Award.
She is making history as the youngest artist to headline
both the Glastonbury and Coachella music festivals
this year, and is currently on
her "Happier Than Ever" world tour.
Please welcome to the show, Billie Eilish, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-Welcome to the show, Billie! -Thank you. How you doing?
-I'm fantastic. I'm so happy to have you here.
And New York has been so happy to have you here.
You got to play Madison Square Garden.
-I sure did.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-I think all of us are in awe
at how much you've accomplished in your very young life so far.
But I can imagine, does it still blow your mind,
when you're in a room like MSG?
-Yes. -That's great.
[ Audience awws ] -Yeah, no, it's great.
I did bawl onstage. -Okay, gotcha.
I did.
Yeah, it was just really weird.
I have a song during the set
where it's all baby footage of me.
[ Audience awws ]
And I was like, walking across the stage
looking at baby me, looking at the crowd,
and I bawled.
-Yeah. -Quite embarrassing.
But what are you gonna do? -What are you gonna do?
I will say, and again,
I think the reaction from this audience
bears that out --
I don't think your audience minds
when you get a little emotional.
-No, they love it. -Yeah, I think they do, too.
[ Cheering ]
And this strikes me as a relationship you had
with your live audience even before this pandemic
that took it away from us, right?
You always had a very close relationship with your audience,
and one that was very honest and open.
And you always told them how much they meant to you.
-Yeah.
I mean, the fan connection has been the number one priority
since literally the beginning.
I wouldn't want to do any of this without it.
I'm dead serious.
There's no reason to do any of this without the connection.
Like, literally no reason at all.
-We love you, Billie!
[ Applause ]
-They write a lot of signs.
There's a lot of preparation that goes into
going to see you live.
And I think that speaks to the connection.
-It's ridiculous.
-This makes sense.
I didn't realize this until I heard you say it.
It must be hard to read a sign while you're singing a song.
-I can't do it. -Okay.
-I literally can't do it.
I try to, because I want to read their signs.
They work so hard on them. They color them in and draw.
I -- I -- Yeah.
I'll be like, "Oh, cool sign," and I'll read it,
and then I forget the words, and it's really bad.
-You wouldn't want to accidentally
sing the words on the sign, sometime.
-No. No.
-This one, you know.
That is somebody who wants, so,
"Sign my body and I will tattoo it on me."
They want you to sign it and they would take --
-That's crazy pressure, man. Right in the middle of a show?
Please. -This one, though.
These are really...
These are a little bit harder to read,
but I've read them earlier.
So this one -- -[ Laughing ]
-"Will you pierce my nipples?"
[ Laughter ]
-Can you imagine if I was like, "Yeah, let's do it right now."
-"Yeah, let's do it right now."
And then then this one is even, this is,
"Burp into the mic."
And by the way, I think they just printed these out.
They didn't even work that hard on them.
-No, that's true, but the crazy thing is,
they hold those up literally for the entire hour and a half.
They never put them down.
And I'm all like, "Burp into the mic"?
Like, okay. That's the statement you want to be...
-Also, it's a very hard thing. -I love it.
-You want to tell them, like, "If I do that,
no one here will understand
it's 'cause it was on your weird, little sign."
[ Laughter ]
And then sometimes they collectively,
like, a large group of them make signs.
[ Audience awws ]
That's is really nice. -This makes me cry.
-I mean, look at these faces. -Yeah.
-They do that.
I think that what they do is somebody organizes it
and they tell everybody else, and then they're all like,
"Okay, here's all these signs."
I'm guessing that they make, like, a bunch at once
and then they hand them out and they're like,
"For this song, let's hold them up."
That's what I thought.
It's so cute. I have cried for that, too.
-And this festival, I mean,
doing festivals again must be so exciting,
and headlining these big...
How excited are you about getting back and doing that?
-Oh, my God, so good.
I did a few in September, and those were like,
the first back since COVID.
[ Applause ]
Oh, it feels so good.
-That, especially that time, obviously another wave came
and made it a little bit less enthusiastic,
being out in public,
but that late summer, early fall was an exceptional time
to be doing live performing again.
-Yeah, oh, my God, we were free.
It was great.
It was like, a month of like, "Oh, COVID's gone."
Nope.
-And then you went and you did "SNL."
You hosted "SNL." -I did.
[ Applause ]
-And like, just got in under the wire before COVID came back.
-Literally the week before. -Yeah.
-I think the host the week after you left was omicron.
-Uh-huh. It was.
It was. -It was omicron.
I have a bunch of questions about "SNL."
Stick around, we will be right back
with more from Billie Eilish.
-Welcome back to "Late Night." We're here with Billie Eilish.
And I -- [ Cheers and applause ]
I do want to ask about "SNL,"
but congratulations on your Oscar nomination.
-Oh, my gosh! [ Cheers and applause ]
-For your Bond song. -I know.
And even being asked to do ' a James Bond song --
it's such a unique thing.
There's no other kind of theme song where, you know,
through the years, it's all these iconic musicians
have taken it on.
What was that process like when you got asked to do it?
Like, who did you have to meet with in the writing?
-Well, it was -- We made the song in October of 2019.
So this was a long, long time ago.
-Yeah, that's a long time. -It's a long time ago.
-That was a movie that got -- Okay.
-So, 17 when we made it. I'm now 20.
-Yeah, there you go. -Interesting.
-Yeah. -Very, very weird.
Yeah, it was a, like, very long kind of strategic process.
It wasn't like, "You got the job, here it is."
We were auditioning, pretty much.
So it was it was not, like, an ego thing.
It was like, really, it's got to be perfect.
We've got to do it right.
They weren't like, "Oh, yeah, we want Billie Eilish."
It was like, "We want you," and we auditioned
and kind of just, like, did our best and worked really hard.
And it was a lot of, like, Barbara, and she kind of gave us
the first little bit of the script,
like, just, like, the opening,
just so that we had a little, like, taste of the movie.
-Was that helpful in the writing of the song?
-It was literally what wrote the song.
-That's wonderful. -Yeah. It was great.
-And you got to meet with Daniel Craig.
-Yeah. -Were you nervous when you --
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-Yeah. It's James Bond. -Yeah, he's James Bond.
-He's James Bond. -And --
-He's a DILF.
-He is a DILF. [ Laughter ]
Thank you for saying it.
I found, when I say it, it's weird,
but I want you to know that I am in full agreement with you.
-You should be.
-But I didn't say it. I just agreed.
-Those eyes? Girl... -Yeah.
I mean, those eyes are crazy. Look, let me just say something.
You have a beautiful blue eyes. I have beautiful blue eyes.
-You do. You absolutely do.
-But we can't even be in the same room as that man's eyes.
-No, no, no, no. No.
-These look like pinkeye compared to him.
-Literally, you would not believe them.
Like, they look crazy. -They are crazy.
-When I met him, I was like, "Whoa!"
Like, they're, like -- It feels like they're here on him.
Like, this is his face, and these are his eyes.
-Exactly. Like, he's -- You want --
If you weren't psyched about it, you'd say,
"Your eyes are in my personal space."
-Yeah, yeah, you would!
-The first time he looked at me, I went, "DILF!"
I didn't -- couldn't stop myself.
-You should get on that. -Well, I don't know.
-Explore. -I don't know.
I do feel like it would be weird if my wife said,
"You get one hall pass," and I was like, "Daniel Craig."
-I don't think it would be weird.
I think you should do it.
-Thank you. -Do you have a hall pass?
-No.
-Daniel Craig. -What? Yeah, no.
Well, I'm going to have to go talk to her about it.
You did a wonderful -- You and Finneas
are going to go to the Oscars together.
-Yeah. -That's really cool.
-Yeah.
-Is there anything in particular
you're most excited about the night?
Will you be nervous the whole day, being a nominee?
-Oh, my God, it's the scariest thing.
No, I went to the Oscars in 2020,
right before COVID happened, and it was, like,
the coolest, scariest thing I'd ever --
I've never been more nervous in my life.
"SNL" and the Oscars are, like,
the scariest thing I've ever experienced.
And -- 'Cause it's not people that I know, really.
It's actors.
And, also, actors are so
much more eloquent than musicians.
Like, musicians are, like, weird and gross and smelly,
and actors are, like, on time and very -- I don't know.
So it was intimidating.
I was -- Yeah, so I'm very nervous.
-If it goes anywhere as well as your "SNL,"
you have nothing to worry about.
This was -- A lot of things I loved.
This was my personal favorite. [ Cheers and applause ]
You and Kate did this sketch together.
-Yeah.
-And this is very good still photo, because it --
You never fully broke, but it did seem like
that was Kate's goal.
-Yeah. We had trouble with this one.
We -- Yeah.
Well, you know, in the dress rehearsal, I was tearing up.
I was dying laughing and I felt like I was going to explode.
It was really honestly genuinely painful.
Like, you know when you're not supposed to laugh
and you have to laugh?
It's -- It hurts. It genuinely hurts.
-Also, watching it and knowing the show,
there was no release point.
You guys were on camera the whole time.
There wasn't a time where it cut away where you could, like,
put yourself back together.
-I know.
And she just was doing so many things
that were pushing me over the edge.
Oh, my God, it was infuriating.
-And your your brother had a fantastic cameo
in the sketch, as well.
-Yeah. -Now, was he --
[ Cheers and applause ] -Yeah, it is.
-Is he a hard sell on that when they asked him to do it
or was he immediately like, "I'm in"?
-Oh, he was in for sure. -Yeah. He was great.
-It's "SNL"! -Yeah, exactly.
-Want a cameo, you get a cameo.
-I want to finish by asking -- Tell everybody what this is.
[ Cheers and applause ] They seem to know.
They seem to know. -Okay.
-So, this is my fragrance.
It's called Eilish, and it's just --
It speaks for itself. -Yeah, it does speak for itself.
-It is -- Here.
-Oh, look at that. Beautiful.
And, now, I heard that, historically,
your connection to the world of fragrance, of perfume --
this was something you shared with your father.
-Yes. -And how were you introduced?
Did he take you to the fanciest perfume shop in the land?
-Macy's. Yeah, he took me to Macy's.
Yeah, fragrance and, honestly, just, like, scent
besides actual fragrances has been, like, my biggest --
like, one of my -- the biggest parts of my life,
if that even makes sense.
I have what I used to call a super-sniffer.
You guys watch "Psyche" when you were little?
Because I love that show. -I watched it when I was little.
[ Laughter ]
-I want to know --
-Did you ever watch "Welcome Back, Kotter"?
-No. -Yeah, I thought.
-No, but I've always had a severe connection to scent,
and I remember everything through scents
and people and colors and all this crazy stuff.
And, like, before I even had any sort of a career
or the idea of a career, fragrance was, like,
the most important thing in my life,
and it, still to this day, has been.
And I honestly am, like, using this, like, facade
that I've created of Billie Eilish
to promote a fragrance.
Like, I'm, like -- I'm using my own clout.
-Well, I think everything you're using your clout for
is making things better, not worse.
And thank you so much for being here.
It was such a delight. -I'm so honored!
-You guys, that's Billie Eilish.