You all remember ‘bad guy’ – the Billie Eilish hit was simply inescapable in 2019. A number one smash around the globe, including in Australia and the U.S., it was really the song that announced a new pop superstar to the world.
Three years later, ‘bad guy’ went viral again earlier this month when a flashback clip of Billie’s producing brother FINNEAS appearing on Jimmy Fallon’s late night show spread online. While discussing the making of the song, he majorly shocked the host when he revealed a shocking Australian connection.
That’s because the pulsating hi-hat that dominates the song’s chorus is actually a sample of the ‘doop doop’ of a Sydney pedestrian crossing. Billie took a sample of the sound when she was down under for Laneway back in 2018.
“My mom and I went for a walk in Sydney, we were like across the street from the hotel,” Billie previously explained to Rolling Stone. “The crosswalk was this little, like, you press it and it’s like ‘doop…doop’ and I was like that’s hard! That’s the sound that it makes when you have to wait.” When she registered the bizarre tonality of our traffic lights, she took out her phone and recorded it and saved it under ‘Grart’ in her phone.
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While the quirky ‘doop doop’ sound is nothing exciting to a Sydneysider by now, Fallon’s incredulity is majestic: “Wait, that happens in Australia?” he asks FINNEAS. ‘Wow,” he adds as he plays the sound over and over again.
I wonder if any other huge pop hits have little Aussie easter eggs hidden within them. Maybe the sound of the MCG crowd yelling in the background. A hip sample of the Bunnings Warehouse jingle. The possibilities are endless.
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Check out ‘bad guy’ by Billie Eilish:
