Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell won the Oscar for best song with What Was I Made For?, which they co-wrote for the Barbie movie soundtrack.
Eilish and O’Connell had to defeat a lineup that included another Barbie song, I’m Just Ken, which was written by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt and sung by Ryan Gosling. Other finalists were Killers of the Flower Moon’s Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People) and American Symphony’s It Never Went Away.
What Was I Made For?, a No. 1 success in the UK and Australia and No. 14 in the US, accompanies a sequence in the film in which Barbie (Margot Robbie) meets the spirit of her creator Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman). It won best song of the year and best music written for visual media at the Grammys in February.
“I feel so incredibly lucky and honoured,” said Eilish, dedicating the award to “everyone affected by the movie and how incredible it was.”
She also thanked her best friend, Zoe, “for playing Barbies with me” as well as two music teachers, one of whom “didn’t like me but you were good at your job”.