Billie Eilish has released two new songs, “TV” and “The 30th,” on streaming services under the umbrella title of “Guitar Songs.”
“TV” has already caught the attention of fans after its first live broadcast in the UK in June during its “Happier Than Ever” tour, but “The 30th” will be new for all listeners. Watch the lyric videos for both songs below.
“Finneas and I really wanted these to be yours ASAP,” Eilish said in a statement, mentioning her producer/co-writer brother. “So here they are! Playing “TV” on tour was a highlight for us too, so we took the audio from the first night we played it in Manchester and put it into the song. I get chills every time I hear it. I hope you like the songs and thank you for allowing us to share our music with you.
“The 30th” details the aftermath of an accident involving someone close to the singer, and her relief that the loved one survived, with the lovingly sung lyrics including, “And I know you don’t remember me. I called / But I already told you you were so pretty / In your hospital bed / I remember you said you were scared / And so did I. Eilish even describes passing by the scene of crash on the Golden State Freeway, not knowing who it involved: “And I stood still on the 5 / Thought it was unusual, morning traffic / Usually I don’t freak out / Just wanted to be at the hour / When I saw the ambulances on the shoulder / I didn’t even think to stop / I put it all back together late at night.
In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about the two new songs, Eilish didn’t go into detail about what the song was about but did describe her songwriting. “We wrote that on December 30, and it was actually the first song we’d written since ‘Happier Than Ever.’ That’s why it’s called ‘The 30th,'” she said, ” because something happened on November 30th and it had been the most indescribable thing to have witnessed and experienced. I had written down all these thoughts that I had. I was with Finneas, and I said to myself : ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you were planning to do, but we have to write this song about it right away’, and we did, and it was the first song we wrote since “Happier Than Ever”.
“TV,” as fans know, leans more toward sociopolitical commentary. Her performance debut last month came as a surprise as artists are increasingly reluctant to try out new content that will land instantly on YouTube, but it turns out her subscribers didn’t have to wait long for a official release. “We haven’t played a new song live until it was released since 2017 or 2018,” Eilish told viewers at the time.
The “studio” version is partly a live track, as Eilish points out; the song’s finale features the audience’s voice singing at Manchester’s AO Arena.
Eilish told Lowe that these two new songs are all she has in the box, and that there is no album on the way at the moment, although she hopes to record one before the end. of the year.
“We will hopefully do another album next year,” Eilish said. “I hate to say that because I know it’s a bummer for people who think, ‘Oh my God, they’re making an album. It’s coming out soon.’ ‘TV’ and ‘The 30th’ are the only songs we have. We don’t have any other songs. These songs are really current for me, and they are songs that I feel like saying right now. I was talking to Finneas and I was like, ‘You know what, man? I don’t want to wait until the next album cycle to put these songs on an album and then it’s like, ‘Wow, we have these two songs from guitar who are two years old.’
About “TV” referring to the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, the singer said, “We wrote that line a few weeks before it was officially overturned. It was a placeholder of misfortune. I mean, it was Glastonbury Day that it happened… We were in this house, and I was sitting with the dogs in the grass. My mother came out, and she just stood there, and she said, ‘They knocked him down.’ … God, it was like a curtain of misfortune. I mean, there was almost no reaction even. I had this unrealistic hope – I guess now I think about it – that it wouldn’t happen. We wrote this line when the news broke that they were considering canceling it, and we wrote this line then. It’s a really scary world right now.
Watch the videos here:
