Goldwing

Album: Happier Than Ever (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Billie Eilish gives out a warning to a young lady who is more innocent than her. The singer advises the "gold-winged angel" to stay clear of certain men who will charm and exploit her; they will then walk away, leaving the vulnerable girl torn apart.
  • In a Spotify lyric mode commentary, Eilish explained she wrote the song as "a metaphor for a young woman especially in the street or life that is pure, and I don't mean a virgin. I mean like a young, non-exploited, non-traumatized person. A metaphor for that being a gold-winged angel."
  • The song begins with a choral arrangement derived from Gustav Holst's 1907 piece "Hymn to Vena." This hymn to the Hindu king Vena hails the sun rising through the mist. It's from the third group of Hymns from The Rig Veda, the English composer's translation of choral hymns from a sacred Hindu text. It was a hymn that Eilish used to sing as a child in the Los Angeles Children's Chorus.
  • At 2:31, this is the shortest song on Happier Than Ever, Eilish's second album.
  • The song is partly inspired by Olivia Rodrigo. "It's not only about her," Eilish told the LA Times. "I was just thinking about her when I was writing it. She was coming up, and she was younger than me, and nobody had ever been younger than me."

    Eilish went on to recall how she worried for Rodrigo after she blew up in the music industry. "She came up in that acting world, and people are so weird. I don't know - I just felt very protective over her. And I feel that way to everyone," she said. "I just see myself in all these young girls. And it's the girls, man. Boys can handle themselves. They're dudes - they don't have to deal with it like we do. I just want to hold everybody in a little glass box and never let anything touch them."

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