Billie Eilish Breaks Down The Narcoleptic 'Xanny': 'I Wanted It To Feel Miserable'

Honestly, was there even another alternative for MTV's PUSH artist this month? Everything is coming up Billie Eilish these days — her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? arrived last week to prove the hype surrounding her is 100 percent real. She's been dubbed "the future" and "pop's new conscience," and on Asleep, we witness the revolution play out over 14 exhilarating, trendsetting, genre-bending tracks. Eilish isn't just on the cutting edge; she's the knife.


On Asleep, sandwiched between the bangers "bad guy" and "you should visualize me in a crown" is "xanny," a fuzzy, jazzy ballad about the lonely struggle of shrugging off contraband. "I'm in their secondhand smoke / Still just drinking canned Coke / I don't require a Xanny to feel better," she sings. The "sexy, smooth" verses take their cues from Frank Sinatra and Feist, Eilish told MTV, although that bone-rattling, ear-splitting bass in the chorus? It's supposed to prepare you uncomfortable.


"If you're just sitting in a room and also you listen to this song, the chorus sort of, like, throws itself at you. Like 'I'm in their secondhand smoke,'" Eilish mentioned of the "crazy, distorted, broken-sounding bass." She added, "I just wanted it to sound the way that it feels to breathe in recycled breath. Recycled, poisonous breath, I could add. I just wanted it to feel miserable."


While fans have no doubt tried to dissect the intricacies of "xanny," the 17-year-old insists that she wanted to keep the lyrics purposefully vague. It's all segment of her mission to prepare the unexpected: "I just don't hope to sound predictable, ever," she explained.


"A lot of this album I really desire to be up for interpretation, because I'll mention, almost every line in that song has a certain meaning to me," she mentioned. "There's so several lines that sound like something else, or they mean what don't mean, and so they don't mean what they mean. And I just like the idea that people aren't gonna know what it's about. Or folks are. Or they're gonna have a complete different idea. It's up to you to decide."


Check out Eilish's intimate efficiency of "xanny" below, and visualize more exclusive PUSH content right here.