Billie Eilish Says She Almost Scrapped ‘Birds of a Feather’ as She Thought Song Was ‘Kind of Stupid’

Since it dropped last year, “Birds of a Feather” has taken flight as one of Billie Eilish‘s most successful songs to date. But in a new interview, the pop star revealed that she almost scrapped it entirely, fearing it was too “stupid” to release.

While speaking to the Wall Street Journal for a profile published Wednesday (Oct. 29), Eilish opened up about spending nearly a full year wrestling with the track in the studio with Finneas, her brother and co-producer. When “Birds of a Feather” — which is far cheerier and uplifting than the singer’s usual brand of pop song — finally came together, Eilish still wasn’t sure if it would ever see the light of day.

“Multiple times I was like, “We should cut this,’” she told the publication. “Even when I played the whole album for the label, I was like, ‘Guys, this one is kind of stupid.’”

Luckily, “Birds of a Feather” made the cut on the tracklist of Eilish’s third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, which dropped in May of last year and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. The buoyant love song spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 and closed out 2024 as Spotify’s most-streamed song of the year with upwards of 1.781 billion streams. (It now boasts more than 3 billion on the platform.)

“Birds of a Feather” also serves as the closing number in Eilish’s tour setlist. After kicking off the trek supporting HMHAS in September 2024, the singer now has just a month or so left of shows before she closes out with a pair of shows in San Francisco in November.

Part of the reason why Eilish has been on tour for so long was so she’d have plenty of room for breaks along the way, she explained to WSJ. “It takes longer, and you make less money that way,” she told the publication. “But for me, it’s magical.”