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Billie Eilish Releases ‘When I Was Older (Inspired By Roma)’

Global superstar Billie Eilish has released an original song for the forthcoming ‘Inspired By’ album to the critically acclaimed, two-time Golden Globe®-winning Netflix film, ROMA. Inspired by the film and curated by Academy Award®-winning ROMA director Alfonso Cuarón, ‘When I Was Older (Music Inspired by Roma)’ was written by Eilish and her long-time…

Music Mayhem

Posted on January 9, 2019

Global superstar Billie Eilish has released an original song for the forthcoming ‘Inspired By’ album to the critically acclaimed, two-time Golden Globe®-winning Netflix film, ROMA.

Inspired by the film and curated by Academy Award®-winning ROMA director Alfonso Cuarón, ‘When I Was Older (Music Inspired by Roma)’ was written by Eilish and her long-time collaborator and older brother Finneas O’Connell. “When we were composing the song, we wanted to write from within the narrative of the movie and the scenes that struck us the most from it,” the siblings reveal. “Having access to the sounds used in the film proved to be invaluable to help us convey this. Lines like “memories burn like a forest fire” are accompanied by the sounds of the trees burning in the woods outside the house. The chorus, has the ocean sounds overplayed on it. We were also able to take sounds like the student protest shouts and Borras barking and turn them into rhythmic percussive elements to help drive the song. Nothing about this song would exist without the film, which is exactly what we love about it.”

The song is out now worldwide via Darkroom/Interscope Records, ahead of the release of a full-length Music Inspired By Roma album via Sony Music Masterworks. Featuring various artists carefully hand-picked by Cuarón himself, every song from the forthcoming album was inspired by specific scenes and sounds from the Esperanto Filmoj and Participant Media produced ROMA, and will see its global release via Sony Music Masterworks.

“When I was older I used to be a sailor, but I drowned in a storm,” says Pepe (played by Marco Graf) from the Golden Globe-winning and Academy-Award shortlisted foreign-language film, and provided the inspiration for 17-year-old- Eilish and her brother Finneas to write the song and give it its title. Listen to ‘When I Was Older (Music Inspired by Roma)’ below.