Billie Eilish shared her long-held dream of writing a song about James Bond with Oscars Night earlier. Finneas used to practice writing. “Bond songs”Just to see what they can come up with.
The practice paid off as the couple performed their 2020 song on stage. “No Time to Die” — a classic, string-laden noir ballad — which minutes later snagged the Best Original Song Oscar over Beyoncé’s “Be Alive,” Sebastián Yatra’s “Dos Oruguitas,” Van Morrison’s “Down to Joy,” and Reba McEntire’s “Somehow You Do.”
“I should’ve known, I’d leave alone,”Eilish sang, her hair in jet-black Sixties style. “Just goes to show that the blood you bleed is just the blood you owe.” Finneas’ piano lines wove around Eilish’s dazed falsetto. Although they may not be the most experienced composers of Bond songs, this performance proved that they were able to understand the task.
“It’s so weird,”Eilish spoke backstage after the performance and victory. “There’s no confusion at all about Bond. It’s been such a big part of our lives for so long, that the fact that we are involved at all was unbelievable. And the approach was very, very exhilarating and like, peak life. And also scary. And we just had so much pressure we put on ourselves. We just wanted to be perfect and represent Daniel Craig’s last film – and all of his films, and how much he put into it. It just was the most amazing experience ever.”
Finneas stated that he had spoken to Sam Smith and Jimmy Napes, former Bond theme writers before taking on this daunting job. “I just asked what the process was like. Again, it was just such an ambition of ours. Really, just like picking their brains about it … It was really important to us that it felt like a Billie Eilish song and a James Bond song at the same time, and not one or the other,”Finneas,
“I really wanted to pay my respects to every aspect ofBond and it’s, you know, I’m from the US, I’m American, and I didn’t want to take away from anything,” Eilish said. “I just really wanted [Daniel Craig] to love it. I wanted him to feel like it represented his years and his last film. I wanted him to be happy. He’s James Bond.”