Billie Eilish says her Grammy-winning song 'Bad Guy' used sound samples from a traffic signal in Sydney

Teen sensation Billie Eilish bagged five Grammy Awards on 27 January at Staples Center in Los Angeles, US. Her song ‘bad guy’ from her debut studio album  When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?  was declared the Record and Song of the Year. In a 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, she had revealed that the song sampled the sound that pedestrian crossing signals make when the light turns green, indicating that it is now safe to cross the street. In the interview, Eilish says she recorded the sound on her phone, “My mum and I went for a walk in Sydney. We were like across the street from the hotel and the crosswalk is this little – 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.” Her brother Finneas O’Connell, who has produced her debut record, says that the sample needed some polishing before it could be used in the song. He further adds that during another visit to Australia, their dad was unaware that the crosswalks’ sound was incorporated into ‘bad guy’. O’Connell also won a Grammy each for Producer of the Year and Best Engineered Album (non-classical). Watch the snippet here

Eilish, a first-time Grammy nominee, even performed ‘When the Party’s Over’ with Finneas on keys and backing vocals. She became the first woman and second person to win all the top awards in a row. The first artist to achieve this was Christopher Cross in 1981. Adele also holds the same accolades but won them over three years notes CNN.