Billie Eilish won song of the year for “Bad Guy” at the 62nd Grammy Awards on Sunday night.
She accepted the award alongside her brother and producer, Finneas O’Connell.
“So many other songs deserved this. I’m so sorry,” began Eilish. “Thank you so much. This is my first Grammys. I never thought this would happen in my whole life. I grew up watching them.”
She then introduced her brother, whom she called her best friend. “I feel like I joke around a lot and I never take anything seriously at these kind of things, but I genuinely want to say I’m so grateful,” Eilish continued. “I only wanna say that I’m grateful and I’m so honored to be here amongst all of you. I love you to my core. I grew up watching all of you.”
After thanking her team, her parents and her friends “for keeping me alive to this day,” Eilish then told Finneas to speak.
“This is a really, really big deal,” he said. “I didn’t think we were gonna win this at all. I loved every song on this list.”
“We just make music in a bedroom together. We still do that and they let us do that,” Finneas continued. “This is to all of the kids who are making music in their bedroom today. You’re gonna get one of these.”
Eilish beat out Lady Gaga’s “Always Remember Us This Way,” Tanya Tucker’s “Bring My Flowers Now,” Taylor Swift’s “Lover,” Lana Del Rey’s “Norman F***ing Rockwell,” Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved” and Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” for the award.
The 18-year-old singer is the youngest winner in this category since Lorde, who was just 17 when she won the prize in 2013 for co-writing “Royals.”
Eilish was up for six awards at this year’s ceremony. She also won for best new artist, album of the year and pop vocal album for When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and record of the year for “Bad Guy.” The only category she lost out on was best pop solo performance, which went to Lizzo.
For decades, the prevailing Grammy strategy has been for artists to enter their biggest and most noteworthy hit of the year in the record and song of the year categories. Swift and Ariana Grande disregarded decades of Grammy tradition and entered different hits for Grammy consideration for the two categories. Swift’s camp entered “You Need to Calm Down” for record of the year and “Lover” for song of the year, while Grande’s team entered “7 Rings” for record of the year and two tunes — “Thank U, Next” and “Boyfriend” — for song of the year.
The 2020 Grammy Awards took place at Staples Center in Los Angeles and aired on CBS. Alicia Keys hosted.
