Billie Eilish debuted a new song titled “TV” at a Manchester concert earlier this month, and it included the following lyric: “The internet’s gone wild watching movie stars on trial / While they’re overturning Roe v. Wade.”
It didn’t take much investigating to know the Grammy winner was referencing the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. The trial was a media sensation for weeks on the internet, so much so that people seemed to care more about the celebrity drama than the Supreme Court’s impending overturning of Roe v. Wade. At least that’s how Eilish viewed it.
“I was in this state of depression, losing my own rights to my own body, and then I’d go on the internet and it would be people giving their take on this trial,” Eilish recently told NME. “Who fucking gives a fuck? Women are losing rights for their bodies, so why are we talking about celebrities’ divorce trials? Who gives a shit? Let them figure it out on their own. The internet bothers the shit out of me sometimes.”
Eilish’s NME interview was published online June 24, the same day the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling effectively ends federal protections of abortion rights and leaves the question of these rights to the states, several of which are expected to enact bans. The writing had been on the wall since a draft majority opinion singling the Supreme Court’s ruling leaked to Politico in May, which happened to be in the middle of the Depp-Heard defamation trial.
Eilish didn’t want to wait for her fans to hear “TV,” which was not featured on her most recent album, “Happier Than Ever.” “I just wanted to go back to my roots: to put a little guitar song back out, and feel like how I used to,” she said. “I was just missing that feeling and missed doing a song that no one had heard yet.”
As for her eventual third album, Eilish had only this to say to NME: “If I think too much about it I’ll freak myself out. I don’t want the next album to be a specific aesthetic, in the way that ‘Happier Than Ever’ was very one-style for a while. For the next one I want it to be current and to be whatever I’m feeling at the time.”
