Yahoo News Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell Become Youngest Two-Time Oscar Winners With Best Song Win
Billie Eilish, 22, and her brother Finneas O’Connell, 26, became the youngest two-time Oscar winners with their best original song Oscar win Sunday night.
The sibling collaborators’ “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie won at the 2024 Oscars. This marks the pair’s second Oscar win in the category, as they took home the award for “No Time to Die” in 2022.
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When Eilish took the stage, she burst out laughing from excitement. “I had a nightmare about this last night,” joked the pop star. She admitted that she was “not expecting” to win again, but feels “so incredibly lucky and honored.”
She continued, “I’m grateful for this song and for this movie and the way that it made me feel. And, this goes out to everyone who was affected by the movie and how incredible it is.”
Besides thanking Barbie director and co-screenwriter Gerwig, Eilish thanked her best friend Zoe Donahue for “playing Barbies with me growing up,” as well as her choir teachers Miss Brigham and Miss T. “You didn’t like me but you were good at your job,” the singer said about the latter.
“What Was I Made For?” competed against other Barbie nominee “I’m Just Ken,” as well as “The Fire Inside” by Becky G from Flamin’ Hot; “It Never Went Away” by Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson from American Symphony; and “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” by Scott George and the Osage singers from Killers of the Flower Moon.
All nominated songs were performed during the ceremony, including the live debut of “I’m Just Ken.” Eilish’s performance was a stunning rendition of her Oscar-winning ballad, accompanied by O’Connell and an orchestra.
In THR‘s songwriter roundtable, Eilish detailed how she ended up writing the song. She said that whole attempting to pen the lyrics, she was struggling creatively and thought she had wasted her day writing alongside her brother. “It was about 8 p.m. and I was like, ‘All right, well, I’m out of here. I’m going to go home. We’re done for the day. We tried,'” she recalled. With O’Connell’s encouragement, Eilish figured it out and tapped in from her own emotions.
“It was just the most perfect example to me of true inspiration and connection. It was living in me that whole day, but it wasn’t coming out of me. We didn’t go into it knowing at all what we were going to make or if we were going to make anything. And it was just so clear that we needed to,” said the Grammy-winning artist.
“What Was I Made For?” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Adult Pop Airplay chart. It additionally made No. 6 on the Pop Airplay chart and No. 17 on the Adult Contemporary chart.
See the star-studded Oscars red carpet 2024 arrivals.
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