Billie Eilish goes behind the scenes with Vevo Footnotes

Singer takes fans behind self-directed “Therefore I Am” video

Five-time GRAMMY Award-winning artist Billie Eilish has partnered with Vevo for an exclusive behind the scenes look at her self-directed “Therefore I Am” music video in the latest installment of Vevo Footnotes.

Eilish reveals that after spending an entire day trying to come up with the perfect concept, the idea to film “Therefore I Am” at a mall came to her and her manager while waiting in line at a Starbucks drive-thru. The video was filmed in one night at the Glendale Galleria Mall in Los Angeles, a familiar stomping-ground for Eilish during her early teen years, using only her mother’s iPhone.

“I usually have visuals that come straight to my head when I think about a song, but for some reason this song didn’t bring visuals to my brain… And then we were waiting for our Starbucks, and we were like, ‘What if it was at the mall?’” Eilish shares.

The official video was released in November 2020. The track was written by Eilish and her producer-brother Finneas. They recorded the track while quarantining, but the songwriting process began in January of 2020.

“We make songs a lot of different ways. Sometimes it starts with piano, guitar, ukulele, sometimes it starts with a melody or lyrics, sometimes it starts with a beat or whatever.” Eilish shares. “We just made it better over time. It was always this song, it always felt like this.”

This is the third time Eilish directed her own music video. She also directed the visuals for “Everything I Wanted” and “Xanny.”

Buddy Iahn
Buddy Iahn

Buddy Iahn founded The Music Universe when he decided to juxtapose his love of web design and music. As a lifelong drummer, he decided to take a hiatus from playing music to report it. The website began as a fun project in 2013 to one of the top independent news sites. Email: info@themusicuniverse.com