As fans wait for new Billie Eilish music, the singer has instead shared some old music: Yesterday (May 9), she brought “Hotline (Edit)” to streaming services. The track is just a minute long and it’s a cover of the Drake classic “Hotline Bling.”
While this may seem random, it doesn’t come completely out of nowhere.
Per setlist.fm, Eilish performed the song dozens of times in 2017 and 2018, seguing it into her own “Party Favor.” Those songs were paired up for a Record Store Day-exclusive vinyl release in 2018 and Eilish shared the two-minute “Hotline Bling” cover on Soundcloud shortly after. The newly shared version is just the second half of the Soundcloud upload.
As for why Eilish decided to share the one-minute version now, that remains unclear. “Hotline Bling” album Views just celebrated its seventh anniversary on April 29, so perhaps that make Eilish think about her old cover again.
Meanwhile, Eilish recently said of performing for huge crowds, “It’s weirdly in a way underwhelming when there’s more people. I played my first stadiums over the summer. […] I was like, ‘I’m in a stadium, it’s so sick, it’s so big, you’re a f*cking star.’ And then you’re on the stage and you feel like you’re alone. It feels like there’s a printed out wallpaper of thousands of people. They’re so far away that there’s like no intimacy.”
Listen to “Hotline (Edit)” and the longer 2018 Soundcloud version above.