Sivan also performed “Rush,” which is on his new album Something to Give Each Other
Get the tissues out. On Tuesday, Troye Sivan visited BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge to cover Billie Eilish‘s “What Was I Made For” from the Barbie soundtrack.
Backed by a keyboard and soft electric guitar, Sivan closed his eyes and sang the lyrics to the heart-wrenching track Eilish co-wrote. “Think I forgot how to be happy/Something I’m not, but something I can be,” Sivan sings. “Something I wait for/Something I’m made for.” Sivan also performed a stripped rendition of “Rush” on the Live Lounge.
The performance comes just a few days before Sivan’s set to release his LP, Something to Give Each Other, on Friday. The album includes singles “Rush” and “Got Me Started,” which samples Bag Raiders’ “Shooting Stars.”
The album-making process came shortly after getting out of a difficult breakup. “I had a lot of friends have that conversation with me when I was going through my breakup: ‘Oh, but you know, you’re gonna be OK, and there’s so many people out there…’ It’s hard to hear it at the time, and you know, you kind of doubt it,” he said. “And then I lived it, and it was this journey that took way longer than I thought it was going to, way longer than it probably should have.”
“But I lived it, and it just felt so mind-blowing to me that they were right,” he added. “So in a way, I almost want the album to serve as me having that conversation with everyone else as a friend being like, ‘Girl, I promise you.’”
Eilish recorded the original “What Was I Made For?” alongside Finneas at his home studio in L.A. “In January, Greta showed me and Finneas a handful of some unfinished scenes from the film; we had nooooo idea what to expect at ALLL… we were so deeeeeply moved.. that the next day we were writing and COULDNT shut up about it,” Eilish said at the time of the song’s release.