Not My Responsibility

Album: Happier Than Ever (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • When Billie Eilish first came to the public attention in her mid-teens, her fashion style comprised a deliberately baggy wardrobe. The pop star has since admitted she wears oversized clothing to prevent people from judging her body. During this spoken-word track, Eilish addresses the body-shaming she has received throughout her career, ultimately concluding that her critics' opinions aren't her responsibility.
  • The song is taken from a three-minute, 41-second film that Eilish first played on her Where Do We Go? World Tour, as an interlude. It shows her slowly stripping off her clothing while addressing and criticizing the public discussion around her body image. The first show was in Miami, Florida on March 9, 2020, but it shut down three days later because of the pandemic.

    After the premature cancellation of the tour, Eilish uploaded Not My Responsibility onto her YouTube channel on May 26, 2020.
  • Eilish included the audio as a spoken-word piece on her 2021 album Happier Than Ever. She described the lyrics in a Spotify commentary as "some of my favorite words that I've ever written and I feel like nobody listened."

    "It's all about body image and all the things we're trained to think and feel about bodies," Eilish continued. "It makes me laugh because I put it out and everyone was like, 'Yas queen! Body positivity!' And then three months later there's a picture of me in a tank top and the whole internet was like, "Fat!'"
  • Eilish and her producer brother Finneas sampled the ambient instrumental from "Not My Responsibility" to make the beat for the next track, "Overheated." Both songs touch on similar themes of body standards.

Comments: 1

  • Piper from Portland OrI love this new song, even though it came out in 1998, this is actually a remake. the simplicity of words and lyrics " my bowels are full of papa johns and there is a line at the door, can I be blamed for what falls on the floor, not my responsibility, not my fault, I warned house keeper to buy plenty of shout" I feel these words speak to young people in the age of pandemics, glad to see the wind blow and hear a clouds whisper.
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