Songfacts®:

• "The Greatest" is a heart-rending look at a love gone sour. The song starts with Billie Eilish yearning for more appreciation and reciprocation, but as the song progresses, she takes a long, hard look in the mirror and starts questioning why she settled for less. By the close, her message is clear: a love that demands constant reassurance isn't worth the trouble. "I shouldn't have to say it. You could've been the greatest," she sings, a hint of steel in her voice.
• Musically, "The Greatest" starts off simple – just Billie and her producer/brother Finneas with a finger-picked guitar. But then, things take a dramatic turn. The song explodes into a full-blown orchestral rocker, complete with a strings by the Attacca Quartet.
• Billie and Finneas began work on Hit Me Hard and Soft in October 2022, but for a long time they were uninspired. Then they wrote "Skinny" and that woke something in them. But it was only in May 2023 when they penned "The Greatest" that the dam burst and the rest of the album flowed.
  
  "'The Greatest' is the song that swooped in and saved the album, in my opinion. It saved every song on here, for real," Eilish told Rolling Stone. "I was in a moment of, 'I don't know, bro. I don't know if we're even going to even have an album made. I don't know if we're good at this. I don't even know if any of the ideas we have are good yet. Nothing's solidified. What the hell is going on?' I lay there and Finneas sat here, got out his little toy guitar that he uses, and started playing stuff. I remember saying something like, 'Do some staccato kind of minor chords,' and he started playing the doo-do-doo-do-doo-do-doo. Literally, all of 'The Greatest' flooded through. From then on, we started finishing songs."
• The melody to the bridge of "The Greatest" echoes the string section at the end of "Skinny."
• There's some speculation about who inspired the song, with fans and media outlets pointing fingers at The Neighbourhood singer Jesse Rutherford (Eilish's ex from late 2022 to May 2023 – their split coincides with the writing of "The Greatest").
  
  Despite the breakup, Eilish assures us they're still on good terms. "That's my guy, truly one of my favorite people in the world," she said of Rutherford in her Rolling Stone cover story.
• Eilish shed tears when she performed "The Greatest" live for the first time during a May 16, 2024, listening party for Hit Me Hard and Soft in Los Angeles.
  
  "The count-in happened and I was sitting there on the edge of the stage in front of this tiny crowd, and I was like, 'Woah, I've never done this one before' and it's really one of my hardest," she recalled on BBC Radio 1's New Music Show with Jack Saunders. "I love that song so much. That song is really, really special to me."
  
  She added, "I literally performed it the other day and cried after."
• Billie Eilish gave the song its live debut on the June 10, 2024, episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
• Billie Eilish adopted a pit bull named Shark in 2020 from Angel City Pit Bulls. The pooch often accompanies her to the studio, and if you pay close attention to "The Greatest" you will hear Shark sighing and grunting, You may also pick up Shark growling on "I Didn't Change My Number" from Eilish's Happier Than Ever album.