"I can die happy": Story behind Billie Eilish's 'Xanny' revealed as she sings song after 2 years to leave fans in shock

Billie Eilish left fans in emotional shock as she sang Xanny after two years at her “Happier Than Ever, The Hometown Encore” concert in Inglewood’s Kia Forum on Tuesday, December 13. Xanny is from her debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? which was released in 2019.

The song talks about the singer’s struggles of being the only one who doesn’t do drugs when everyone around her is addicted. She also expressed her strong aversion to drug usage through this song.

In the hometown concert, Billie sang this single along with her other hit tracks, including Therefore I Am, Ocean Eyes, Bad Guy, Everything I Wanted, and I Love You.

One fan was so overwhelmed that they wrote:

When the song came out in 2019, the singer preferred to keep the lyrics vague. In an interview, she said:

"A lot of this album I really want to be up for interpretation, because I will say, every single line in that song has a certain meaning to me. There's so many lines that sound like something else, or they mean what they don't mean, and they don't mean what they mean. And I just like the idea that people aren't gonna know what it's about. Or people are. Or they're gonna have a complete different idea. It's up to you to decide."

Eilish described the bass in the chorus as “crazy, distorted, broken-sounding.” She said if one listens to this song while sitting in a room, the chorus seems to throw itself at the person. Billie added:

"I just wanted it to sound the way that it feels to breathe in recycled breath. Recycled, poisonous breath, I may add. I just wanted it to feel miserable."

No doubt Billie’s fans have dissected the song’s lyrics and tried to devise their own interpretation. However, the singer mentioned that she never wanted to sound predictable. Thus, keeping the meaning of the lyrics vague was on purpose.

---

Billie Eilish speaks about the glamorization of drug use in the context of her 2019 single Xanny

When The Guardian asked Billie Eilish about the inspiration behind Xanny, she replied:

“I don’t want my friends to die anymore.”

While sharing the song’s backstory in the interview, Billie referred to the glamorization of drug use, especially among teens and young adults. She mentioned that ‘Xanny’ in her song refers to a popular drug, Xanax, which is widely used by people of all ages, including young adults.

Billie Eilish explained that her song Xanny conveys the message:

“less ‘don’t do drugs’; it’s more ‘be safe’”.

Billie, in her song, tries to say that she doesn’t need or want the drug ‘Xanax,’ and she doesn’t want to feel better with the help of a drug. Xanny is Billie’s urge to teens not to succumb to peer pressure and indulge in drugs. She said:

“I know people around you doing that s**t makes you want to, but you don’t have to.”

Billie Eilish also revealed:

“I have never done drugs, I’ve never got high, I’ve never smoked anything in my life. I don’t give a f**k, I never have. It’s just not interesting to me. I have other s**t to do.”

In a previous interview from when Xanny just came out, Billie Eilish talked about an incident. She said that the day the lyrics for the song were written, Billie was with a group of her friends the previous night. Her friends got drunk and started throwing up.

Billie wasn’t since she didn’t drink. However, the singer was disturbed by the fact that her friends kept drinking even after throwing up, and nobody cared. It bothered her and made her question if this was normal for teens.

Billie Eilish shared that alcohol and other drugs made her friends turn into someone they weren’t. What she wrote in Xanny was, in a way, the impact of her witnessing her friends’ personalities getting crumpled up and falling.

However, fans have been sharing their stirring reactions on Twitter about Billie Eilish performing Xanny on stage for the first time in almost three years.

Billie's iconic live performance of Xanny on Tuesday made the song hit 400 million streams on Spotify.