Right at the start of 2024, the internet whipped itself up into a frenzy thinking that Bring Me The Horizon might be working with Billie Eilish.
Of course, since the band released their brilliant new album POST HUMAN: NeX Gen on Friday, we now know that’s not the case. But after frontman Oli Sykes commented the word “limousine” on Billie’s Instagram in January, fans suspected the pop superstar would guest on that very song (when, in actual fact, the finished version released last week features AURORA).
In a recent interview with Daniel P. Carter for the The Radio 1 Rock Show – which also featured an entire play-through of NeX Gen – Oli explains where the confusion came about, sharing that Billie was sent an unfinished version of the song a while back, but BMTH don’t know if she was able to check it out or not.
“The Billie thing was just: her photographer’s a massive fan, and they kinda mentioned the idea of her doing a song,” Oli reveals. “So I her sent liMOusIne. And this was quite a while before it was in its full, finished state. I mean, I can’t say for 100 per cent that she listened to it, but I knew it got to her. So me thinking that liMOusIne wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but me and maybe her if she saw the comment, [I] left it on her Instagram, not thinking that a week or two later when we did the tour, we put the file names on our visuals live, and everyone connected it.
“It was one of them things that seemed like such a proper cheap way to try and get some press, but it really wasn’t,” he stresses. “I was actually quite embarrassed when I found out – like, ‘Oh god, no!’ Because I knew the chance of Billie doing a song with us was slim to none.”