Billie Eilish revealed that she was a huge fan of Taylor Swift‘s “Picture to Burn” when she was a little kid, but until this year, she had no idea it was even a song from Swift’s catalog.
The singer put the track on the playlist of the latest episode of “me & dad radio,” the Apple Music show she records with her father, Patrick O’Connell. “Picture to Burn” was released as a single in 2008, after appearing on Swift’s country debut album in 2006 — before her foray into pop superstardom.
“I used to love this song when I was like 4, no, probably older than that. Probably like 6,” Eilish shared.
“Taylor Swift had these wonderful crossover country-pop songs that had these great stories to tell,” her dad pointed out, as Billie softly sang the chorus to another early Swift hit, “Love Story.”
“It’s crazy. It’s very country,” Eilish said. “When I listen to it now, I’m like, wow. I totally didn’t realize how country this was. But I loved this song back then because I thought it was so bad-ass. I thought it was so cool and mean. I just loved it.”
But then she admitted, “I actually didn’t know it was Taylor Swift until this year.”
Not only did Eilish not know that Taylor Swift sang “Picture to Burn” — the young future music star also didn’t even understand what Swift was singing about.
“I didn’t understand at all what a ‘picture to burn’ meant,” she admitted. “The only word of ‘burn’ that I knew, that I thought that she meant, was like when you burn a CD.”
Hear what Eilish had to say about the classic Swift track below, and listen to the latest episode on Apple Music.
