Overheated

Album: Happier Than Ever (2021)
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Songfacts®:

  • "Overheated" directly follows on from the spoken work track "Not My Responsibility" on Billie Eilish's Happier Than Ever album. It also shares the same theme as its counterpart, with Eilish calling out the media for the undue attention they give to her body.
  • On Spotify, Eilish said she and her producer brother Finneas took the production from "Not My Responsibility," constructed a beat around it, then used that when they wrote "Overheated."
  • Lyrically, this is about Eilish's bewilderment over why the media and public are so interested in her body. "Why the f--k is it such a shock that I look like all of you? That's the funny thing: On the internet, you feel so powerful and somehow invisible at the same time, but everybody sees it. You say crazy stuff on the internet thinking nobody will see it," she wrote. "It's really about the insanity of paparazzi and articles and comment sections... and Twitter!"
  • It's likely Eilish partly wrote the song in response to the hate she received online after she was photographed in late 2020 wearing a tank top.

    I started watchin' them photographin'
    I don't really I don't really, how it happened
    Instead of stoppin', they still were flashin'
    I started walkin' I don't really, gave no reaction


    Until that incident, Eilish was always seen wearing baggy clothing to stop people from judging her body. But after the paparazzi snapped the young singer in a form-fitting tank top, she was subject to some brutal body shaming.
  • During the bridge, Eilish discusses the pressure on celebrities to have cosmetic surgery and "people who promote unattainable body standards." She told The Guardian: "It's completely fine to get work done - do this, do that, do what makes you feel happy. "It's just when you deny it and say, 'Oh, I got this all on my own, and if you just tried harder, you could get it.' That makes me literally furious. It is so bad for young women - and boys, too - to see that."
  • The spoken interlude "Not My Responsibility" segues into "Overheated" seamlessly, something Eilish and Finneas have done before. On her first album, the beat for the 10th track, "Bury A Friend," blends into the 11th track, "Ilomilo." Finneas told MTV News he does this to give his sister's records further cohesion.

    "I like songs that exist with the knowledge of other songs," he explained. "They're not linked in that they need each other to exist, necessarily, but they're like two different episodes of the same TV show. Just little fun things like bleeding songs into each other, those make it feel like a full album."

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