Billie Eilish’s “Bury A Friend” Samples A Drill She Recorded During A Dentist Visit

Billie Eilish’s new album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? dropped just a few days ago, and it looks set to catapult the teen singer to a new level of stardom. The project’s biggest single, “bury a friend,” reached No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart last month despite a dark tone and unorthodox song structure, and in a new interview with The New York Times, the singer and her brother FINNEAS explained how the track came together.

“bury a friend” features multiple sound effects, including breaking glass, an easy bake oven timer, and a dentist’s drill. The latter sound is actually a recording Billie made on her phone during a trip to the dentist to remove her Invisalign.

“I was in the dentist chair and they were shaving off my Invisalign attachments, and it was this loud ‘Reeer’ shit, and I thought it was so dope and I pulled out my phone immediately and pressed record,” she explained. Her Invisalign also gets a shoutout on the project’s intro track “!!!!!!!”:

I have taken out my Invisalign and this is the album

FINNEAS explained that he wasn’t a fan of the drill noise but discovered that it worked surprisingly well. “I found it very horrible to listen to but it worked great in the song,” he said.

The inclusion inspired him to seek out additional sound effects to match the lyrics. “As soon as there was a line about stepping on glass, I wanted to hear someone stepping on glass. As soon as there was a line about a staple, I was smacking a staple gun,” he said, referencing the song’s refrain:

Step on the glass, staple your tongue
Bury a friend, try to wake up

All the noises, coupled with the song’s strange structure and overall creepy vibe, had the siblings worried if they had gone too far. “The song is so weird, and we were like, ‘Can you understand it and actually sing along?’” Eilish asked. When they put it out and saw the reaction, however, it gave them even more confidence to experiment.

“I’m really glad it ended up being the weirder version of the song,” FINNEAS said. “When the song came out, I said to Billie, ‘I think we get to do whatever we want now.’”

“bury a friend” currently sits at No. 46 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart after peaking at No. 14. The song is likely to rebound next week as fans stream and purchase the album. WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? is projected to move around 250,000 equivalent album units in its first week, which would likely guarantee the project a No. 1 debut.

Check out the siblings' full New York Times interview here and read all the lyrics to Billie Eilish’s “bury a friend” on Genius now.