Billie Eilish just gained one of the most valuable achievements in the music panorama. Her 2024 hit Birds of a Feather became the most streamed song by a single female on Spotify.
The What Was I Made For? artist achievement one of the golden spots in music. This historic goal comes after surpassing the previous song that held this title, Dance Monkey by Tones and I. one of the most surprising things about this accomplishment is its short time between the song’s release and the exceeding. While it was launched as part of the Hit Me Hard and Soft album on May 17, 2024, it was also released like a single on July 2, 2024.
Birds of a feather, we should stick together, I know/ I said I’d never think I wasn’t better alone/ Can’t change the weather, might not be forever/ But if it’s forever, it’s even better/ And I don’t know what I’m crying for/ I don’t think I could love you more
Billie’s hit song from her third studio album took only one year and eight months to reach the top. At the same time, Birds of a Feather also became the “second-most streamed song by a female artist overall”, according to Billie’s Reddit page.
The thing is Eilish success is unmatched, since the first track on the most listened female song overall spot is also hers. Her collaboration with musician Khalid called Lovely holds the first place at the moment.
Its Success
It is a reality that Birds of a Feather has become one of the most popular songs of the global music sphere. Billie’s hit reached the first position on Billboard Global 200 in at least nine different countries. The tune also became the most listened song in 2024 on the platform Spotify with millions of streams.
Furthermore, it achieved several top award nominations a year ago. It was nominated for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2025 Grammy Awards.
Finneas’ Point of View
On an episode of Mix with the Masters, Billie’s brother and producer Finneas talked about the writing and producing process of the song. “I’d be in my studio, and I’d be working on the instrumental stuff, and she’d have a vocal and we’d put some processing in it. She was able to sing with that while we were writing the song and have the delay to feed off of, which I think has a lot to do with the actual writing of the song. It’s her kind of writing knowing that the vocal is ‘gonna’ have all this kind of slappy delay on it”, the musician said.
In addition, he also commented on its unexpected turnout and the short processing time. “Sometimes when you make something and it feels good right away, but it happened really quickly you tend to overthink it. Again, those four elements being like drums, tambourine, ‘underlick’ and then that super vibey synth, that was within five, ten minutes.”
He talked as well about the need that producers sometimes have to “overcomplicate” things. “Billie started singing over that, so then you sort of think ‘Well, it can’t be that simple. That happened in a moment’ You know? And you start to try to kind of overcomplicate it. Really to us, the magic was just in how that felt, that kind of stripped bare feeling”, admitted Finneas on Mix with the Masters.
