Billie Eilish’s latest single just dropped, and it’s full of all the thoughtful touches we adore from references to literature to a beat that sticks in your head. In the song she calls on French philosopher René Descartes for the song’s title and recurring chorus line, “I think therefore I am.” Descartes was trying to contextualize our realities in the 1600s. Four hundred years later, Billie is using his line to empower herself.
The song is produced by Billie’s brother Finneas and premiered on YouTube with a music video directed by Billie. In the video, Billie runs around an empty mall, singing in the hallways and stealing pretzels until she gets caught (whoops!) at the end of the video and makes a quick escape into a parking garage.
In an interview with Zane Lowe, Billie talked about how the music video came together. “The video is just the way the song feels to me of just kinda like careless and not really trying. The video, number one, we shot on an iPhone which we didn’t even mean to do. It’s basically me running through the empty Glendale Galleria, eating a donut and a pretzel. That’s literally it. It’s some random, chaotic, don’t care shit. And it was so fun, we shot it overnight, shot it on an iPhone, we had barely any crew. It was crazy.”
Listen to “Therefore I Am” now!