“The 30th” by Billie Eilish

"The 30th" is one half of Guitar Songs, the two-song EP Billie Eilish dropped without warning on July 21, 2022, through Darkroom and Interscope, because she wanted fresh music in her fans' hands as fast as possible. She wrote it in December 2021 with her brother Finneas O'Connell, and it was the first thing she made after finishing Happier Than Ever. The title is a date: November 30, 2021, the day a friend nearly died in a car crash.

It's a plainspoken, close-up ballad, a long way from the fantasy of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Finneas handles guitar, piano, synth, bass and drums and produced it, the siblings recorded it themselves, and Rob Kinelski mixed. She had weighed it for her third album before deciding the words were too immediate to wait, and she sang it live for the first time on the tour's Asian leg.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.