Making a song for the Barbie movie allowed Billie Eilish to move past a “really dark place” in her life, she said as she took home a top prize at the Grammys.
The American singer, 22, appeared stunned as she won song of the year for her Barbie The Album ballad What Was I Made For? during the 66th prestigious music awards ceremony.
On stage, she thanked the director of the blockbuster doll film Greta Gerwig for “making the best movie of the year”, with the video cutting over to show her fellow nominee in that category, Taylor Swift, nodding in agreement.
She also praised her brother and fellow collaborator Finneas O’Connell, whom she described as her best friend.
Eilish also won a Grammy for best song written for visual media on Sunday.
Speaking in the winners’ room, she said: “To be real with you, we had really been writing absolutely nothing before we had that opportunity to write for Barbie, we had been working three days a week and not coming up with stuff.
“And even if we were coming up with stuff, it just didn’t feel right, didn’t feel good, didn’t feel real, and I got really worried, nervous. I felt like it was (going to) be over a little bit.
“I was in a really dark place, really, really dark place and it’s kind of hard to think back to it.
“But Greta came to us, she offered us this life-changing thing … we wrote that song in the 24 hours after we saw the movie, and we wrote it under two hours, if not one hour.
“Honestly, from then on we were just creative again, it woke us up and got us back on our thing and it was really special and powerful and I hold it deep, deep and dear to my heart.”
Eilish also said she felt “seen and heard” after releasing the track, which reached number one in the UK charts.
“When we made it I didn’t know how much this is going to translate. I felt kind of outside the box,” she added.
“I felt isolated in my own world and I really was in a period of my life where I did not feel seen at all.
“The way people reacted when it came out. I was completely blown away by the way I felt understood and this (the Grammy) just goes even farther than that.”
She also performed her Grammy-winning track at the ceremony, dressed as the 1965 Barbie Poodle Parade doll wearing black sunglasses and a pink head scarf, with O’Connell on the piano.