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The Meaning Behind Billie Eilish’s Love Song "Birds of a Feather"
Believe it not, the wildly popular song nearly got cut from her new album.
Ever since Billie Eilish released her debut album in 2019, she’s been dropping hit and hit. From “Bad Guy” to “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie to her most recent chart-topper “Birds of a Feather,” the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter is clearly unstoppable.
But Eilish, 22, is not only a lyrical wizard; she’s also mastered the art of comedy. Appearing on Saturday Night Live in 2019, 2021, and again in 2023, Eilish is behind more than a few iconic sketches. And now she’s returning to the SNL stage as the Musical Guest on October 19, with Michael Keaton as the night’s Host.
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Eilish has performed many of her hit songs on SNL, including “I Love You” and “Male Fantasy” with her brother, producer, and songwriting partner Finneas. This time around, one song on everyone’s radar is “Birds of a Feather” from her 2024 album Hit Me Hard and Soft.
Read on to learn all about the meaning behind “Birds of a Feather,” Eilish’s thoughts on specific lyrics, and how the love song almost got nixed from the album.
What is Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” song about?
Eilish’s song “Birds of a Feather” is about being deeply in love with someone and loving them until the very end.
“There’s a lot of songs about dying for somebody and loving them until they die, and I thought it was really fun to lean in,” Finneas said in a lengthy video on Eilish’s YouTube channel about the making of “Birds of a Feather.”
Eilish added in the behind-the-scenes video that they wanted to “reverse” that traditional theme, which is highlighted in the song’s very first verse: “I want you to stay / 'Til I'm in the grave / 'Til I rot away, dead and buried / 'Til I'm in the casket you carry.”
If the lyrics feel extreme or intense, that’s exactly what Eilish wanted to evoke. “It’s almost like someone slamming you into a wall and being like ‘You look really pretty!’ and you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s really a lot!’” she explained. “That’s what I wanted the verse to do. I wanted it to feel, like, toxic and a little bit love-bomby.”
But if listeners felt something different, Eilish is more than OK with that. “With music, my whole thing is that it's for the listener to decide what it means,” she said in the video. “It doesn't matter what I wrote it about, what Finneas wrote it about, it really doesn't matter, as long as you interpret however you need to."
The song’s title is also symbolic. The idiom “birds of a feather” refers to two people who are very alike and have similar interests. When it’s said with “flock together,” it’s implied the two are often with each other. In Eilish’s song, she puts her own touch on the phrase, singing in the chorus: "Birds of a feather, we should stick together, I know.”
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The second verse of “Birds of a Feather” comes from a different perspective
“I really loved the second verse,” Eilish said in the video, explaining that the lyrics are “different from the rest of the song.”
In other parts of the “Birds of a Feather,” Eilish said she was “writing what I wanted to feel.” But the second verse is meant to show how she actually feels about the person she loves so much.
The line “I want you to see / How you look to me / You wouldn't believe if I told ya” touches on how our own insecurities and self-doubt make it hard to see ourselves the way others do, especially those who truly love you.
“It’s not actually possible to see ourselves how someone else sees But if it was, you literally wouldn’t believe it. If I could give you my view of you, you would be so shocked and so stoked because it’s awesome,” Eilish explained of the lyrics.
Referring to the line “Tell me it’s a bit,” Eilish said, “That one’s interesting to me because I think people hear it in a different way. For me, that’s me being like ‘Tell me you’re joking. Like tell me it’s a bit that you don’t see how amazing you are.’”
What inspired “Birds of a Feather”?
Eilish said she and Finneas initially sought to create a more traditional love song, but things changed when they actually started writing “Birds of a Feather.”
“We were like, 'Oh, we'll make a love song for the first time that doesn't have some weird twist to it,' and then, we twisted it,” she said in the video. “We were coming up with all these rhymes and ‘grave’ came up, so it was already this like happy sounding thing and we just always love the juxtaposition of that with the lyrics.”
In an interview with BBC Radio 1, Eilish said while “Birds of a Feather” is “more poppy” sounding, there’s also a sense of sadness to it. “It’s giving happy, but it’s not actually,” she said.
That emotion can be heard throughout the song, including in the pre-chorus: “I don't know what I'm crying for / I don't think I could love you more /Might not be long, but baby, I don't wanna say goodbye.”
“Birds of a Feather” almost didn’t make it on Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft album
Eilish and Finneas spent nearly a year writing the global hit, but it nearly got cut from the tracklist.
“We overthought this sort of simple song so hard,” Finneas said in the behind-the-scenes video. “We kept getting lost in the maze on this song.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever overthought another song more,” Eilish added. “There was a period where we were considering not putting it on the album. But thank god we didn’t do that.”
