Music

Nobody Can Believe Billie Eilish’s ‘Bad Guy’ Samples Sydney’s Pedestrian Crossing Sound

Eilish snuck a little bit of Sydney into the massive song.

by Joseph Earp  28 January 2020
Billie Eilish sampled some of a Sydney crosswalk sound in 'Bad Guy'

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Forget Satanic messages — now, thanks to Billie Eilish, the cool thing to hide in your songs is a little bit of Sydney’s traffic light sounds.

See, when Eilish and her brother, the musician Finneas O’Connell, were on one of their many trips to Australia, they fell in love with the sound that crosswalks make when they’re telling you it’s safe to get across the street.

And who can blame them — it’s a crisp little beat, all jagged and manic, and exactly the kind of thing that you’d expect to have found in a hundred songs by now.

Inspired, Eilish recorded the sound and saved it as a voice memo on her phone. Shortly thereafter, O’Connell chopped it up into ‘Bad Guy’, hiding it just under that extremely iconic chorus and pitch-shifting it just a little.

You can watch the pair talk about the entire process in a hugely informative video interview from Rolling Stone:

In fact, this news has been out there for a little while now — the clip first made the rounds on Twitter at the end of last year. But with Eilish back in the spotlight after topping the Hottest 100 and winning a shedload of Grammys, it’s not so surprising that people are once again celebrating the fact that a little piece of Sydney will be contained forever in one of the biggest songs of the year.

It’s like an insect trapped in some particularly commercial amber.

Long live Billie Eilish, is what I’m saying.