It’s considered a high honor to write a Bond song, but for Billie Eilish, it became a full-circle moment when she was tapped to compose the theme for the latest James Bond movie, No Time to Die.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Wednesday, the “bad guy” singer revealed she had plenty of practice before taking a crack at her now Grammy-winning song because, when she was younger, she and her brother and collaborator, FINNEAS, would pretend to write Bond themes for fun.
“Years before the Bond song — our song — was even a topic of discussion with us, we would do it as a songwriting exercise,” Billie recalled. “We would just be like, ‘Let’s sit down and do some chords that feel Bond-esque.'”
Eilish said she and her family are massive Bond fans, so she’s well aware of the theme-song talent that came before her, including Paul McCartney and Sam Smith. When it came to picking her favorite Bond singer of all time, the honor went to Adele, who performed 2012’s “Skyfall.”
“I know that was more of a recent one, but my favorite song in the world,” she raved. “I loved that song.”
Kimmel also brought up the possibility of Eilish winning an Oscar for “No Time to Die,” which led to the two discussing the singer’s interest in making movies; she’s already directed a few documentaries.
While Eilish said “cinematography is really something I admire,” she said she won’t venture out from behind the camera to “act in stuff” unless “something came along that felt right.”
“I used to want to make a movie really bad, like that was a thing I was planning on doing,” she teased. “Who knows.”
Eilish and Finneas later closed the show by performing “Happier Than Ever.”
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