Billie Eilish just appeared on the Zach Sang Show, where she opened up about her Coachella experience.
Her stage faced a flurry of technical difficulties: a delay cut into her time, the screen wasn’t working, and guest performer Vince Staples’ mic was dead. Eilish reportedly ended up appearing over 30 minutes late to her set.
“Everyone blamed it on me when I was literally standing there behind the stage like, ‘Can we go?’” she said. “I was standing behind the stage for 45 minutes.”
But she wasn’t alone as Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj as well as Lizzo had to cope with audio problems.
“Since it was a delay, we had to cut two songs, which was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Eilish said. “xanny” and “WHEN I WAS OLDER” were axed from the setlist.
The singer has previously called “xanny” one of her favorite songs on her debut studio album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? She had trouble when the production team asked her which songs she’d be comfortable cutting. “That would’ve been easier back in the day when there was a couple that I didn’t care about,” she said. “There was no song that I wanted to cut. That was a first.”
Her Coachella performance also received plenty of media attention when Eilish forgot the lyrics to “all the good girls go to hell.” “I’ve been so excited to do it live,” she said. “It’s one of my favorite ones now… It was great [at Coachella], and then it got to the second verse. And I started thinking about something else. I just was gone.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Eilish talks about how her physically demanding shows often leave her in pain. “That’s why it’s so bad, because I would rather not do a show than do a crappy version.” On her last tour, she had shin splints and a sprained ankle. She considered dropping her Manchester date because “I can’t give you the show that I want to give you.”
“As much as my shows are for everybody else, they are also for me,” she continued. “It is my happy place, and it is my peace and joy, and I don’t want to fuck it up. I don’t want it to look stupid.”
Check out all of Billie Eilish’s lyrics on Genius now.
