Billie, Dua and Olivia remember their very first songs

Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo may end up with Best Original Song Oscar nominations, thanks to the songs they wrote for, respectively, Barbie and the new Hunger Games prequel film. But when they got together for a Hollywood Reporter roundtable, they reflected on their very first attempts at songwriting.

Dua wrote her first song at age 4 or 5. She tells The Hollywood Reporter, “I made up this song. Albanian was my first language, and so I sang it in Albanian, and it was a song I’d made for my mom. I’d walk around the house, and I’d be like, ‘When I grow up, can I borrow your shoes? And when I grow up, can I wear your dress? And when I grow up, can I be just like you?'”

Billie revealed that she was completely on-brand, even as a child. “The first lyrics I remember writing was probably when I was 8 or something,” she says. “And it was like, ‘I’m going down, down, down into the black hole, sweeping up your soul today.’”

By comparison, Olivia was a late bloomer. “I guess the first song that I wrote on piano, proper, I was probably 14 or 15,” she says. “And I wrote this feminist anthem called ‘Superman,’ about how I didn’t need Superman to come and save me. Start them young.”

Speaking about her Barbie song “What Was I Made For?,” Billie said that before director Greta Gerwig asked her for a song, she thought her ability to write them had dried up.

“I thank God for Greta, man. I honestly was concerned that it was over for me … she saved me, really, honestly. Getting that request … immediately we were inspired and wrote so much more after that.”