Billie Eilish took over The Last Show last night with a performance of her recent single “Lunch” and a lengthy interview with host Stephen Colbert. The singer took the late-night show’s stage to showcase the pulsating song, which comes off her new LP, Hit Me Hard and Soft, alongside her brother/producer Finneas and her band.
During her interview, Eilish discussed growing up in Los Angeles in a musical family, being inspired by fellow musicians, and how she shot her new album cover. She also reflected on trying to figure out who she was in the public eye.
“I kind of needed to play this whole thing of ‘I’m not what you think I am,’” she recalled. “I thought at the time that it was very me and I realize in hindsight I was just trying to be seen and express myself and show that people can be multi-faceted and I am one of those people. I think that with Hit Me Hard and Soft, it’s the first time since I’ve been an adult and maybe ever in my creative life — it truly is the most genuine thing I’ve ever made. It feels very, very me.”
Hit Me Hard and Soft is Eilish’s third studio album. She told Rolling Stone in her recent cover story that “Lunch” was “actually part of what helped me become who I am, to be real.”
“I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after,” Eilish explained. “I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand — until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina. I was never planning on talking about my sexuality ever, in a million years.”
She added, “Nobody should be pressured into being one thing or the other, and I think that there’s a lot of wanting labels all over the place. Dude, I’ve known people that don’t know their sexuality, or feel comfortable with it, until they’re in their forties, fifties, sixties. It takes a while to find yourself, and I think it’s really unfair the way that the internet bullies you into talking about who you are and what you are.”
The singer also recently revealed that she nearly named the album after a quote from her favorite TV series, The Office: Patheticville. “I just thought that was awesome, and we laughed and we wrote it down,” she told Rolling Stone. “Then there’s a couple more that we thought of and nothing was really sticking, but I knew it would come. It always comes.”