The road to the release of Eilish Gilligan’s debut album has been a long and windy one, but she’s finally at its destination with “Final Girl” out in the world. The expansive pop record is one full of vulnerability, experimentation, and spine-tingling vocals. Immediately hitting you with eight perfect pop songs, she dives into dark places to give you moments of shimmer. With songs like “Swollen” that have been in her live set since 2018, as well as brand new songs that have coached her through recent moments, it ultimately feels like the perfect and all-rounded representation of who Eilish Gilligan is as a person and as an artist. 

To celebrate the release of “Final Girl”, I spoke to Eilish Gilligan about how her vision for her debut album has evolved over time, explored the creative process of the songs, and found out who her ultimate final girl in horror movies is. Check out the full chat below;

THOMAS BLEACH: Your debut album “Final Girl” is finally out in the world, and it’s a record that has been years in the making. During this long process did your vision of what your debut album would mean or represent to you evolve or change? 

EILISH GILLIGAN: Oh my god, it literally changed in every single way something can change. It’s hard to articulate exactly, but I think I’d been working on it for so many years as a young woman, and you just change so much throughout your 20s. Like, I am just a completely different person now compared with when I started this record – I have different goals, different taste, and a completely different attitude towards the music industry. 

TB: This record feels like a true celebration of vulnerability with this beautiful catharsis at the very heart of it. When you look back at the record in its entirety now, what would you say is the most vulnerable moment for you?

EG: I’m a pretty open person, and when it comes to my songwriting I’m not afraid to own my part in whatever went wrong in whatever situation I’m eulogising. I think the most vulnerable part of the album for me is actually on the closing track “All The Time”. I wrote that song a long, long time ago and it was the first time I really grappled with the idea of my own mental illness playing an actively detrimental role in my relationship with my partner at the time. That was hard. 

TB: Opening track “The Catch” immediately hits you with this infectious dose of electro-pop and glitchy experimentation. Can you explain the creative process behind this track?

EG: I wrote this song during lockdown, and I wrote it specifically with Eurovision in mind. I was trying to write a song that was completely irresistible, electro-pop with a chorus that was easy to remember, with a vocal melody that was easy to grasp in just one listen. Taking this demo to Gab was the easiest thing in the world – he knew exactly where I was going with it. 

TB: I really love the lyric – “No one else can love you like I can. Make you feel like you’re falling. But the catch is there’s no telling where you’ll land”. What inspired the imagery for this line?

EG: Thankyou! Weirdly, after writing “All The Time” – and maybe with the hindsight that comes with getting older, too – I couldn’t stop thinking and writing about all the ways in which my own mental health was affecting my closest relationships. Obviously this is a bit neurotic and navel-gaze-y of me but I couldn’t shake the idea that my issues were always going to sabotage any relationship in my life. I had a run of relationships that didn’t work out and I blamed myself for that (I think rightfully in many ways) – “The Catch” was literally my way of telling people like, ‘I might seem all good now, but just wait ‘til I go crazy, you’ve been warned’. 

TB: “Swollen” is a song that has been in your live set for a while now. After performing it live over the years, and seeing how audiences reacted to it and how it felt for you to perform, did you change any of the production?

EG: It’s so wild to me that “Swollen” was the closer for my live set for the longest time and has only now just been released! We really kept the fundamentals of “Swollen” pretty true to the original version. It’s always had those horns at the end – in fact I’m pretty sure we used the original horns my friend Max Dowling recorded way back in 2018 in the final version. 

TB: The pulsating synth track “Swimming” hears you singing “It’s crazy to me how we voluntarily walk into the ocean to swim”. What triggered this realisation?

EG: Normally my songwriting is very literal, very candid, confessional and self-analytical – but when I wrote “Swimming” I was falling in love quite gently, and wanted to find a way to communicate that that wasn’t just reciting my diary entries, haha. I liked the idea of swimming in the ocean because obviously there’s the common saying, ‘there’s plenty of fish in the sea’ – I was thinking about how wild it was that I was even contemplating falling in love with someone after a run of bad breakups. Why on earth would I put myself in that situation again knowing where it landed me the last few times? But I also knew it was this inevitability, something irresistible draws us back into relationships – kind of like how we run into the ocean to swim even though we’re very aware that swimming in the ocean is kind of dangerous. 

TB: “Space” is another very sonically expansive track. Do you have a fun fact you can share with us about the creative process of this track?

EG: I love “Space”. As soon as I wrote it I knew it was going to be on the album – actually, the realisation was more like ‘well now I’m going to have to do the album so I can put this song out!’, I just love simple, irresistible pop songs and I really think “Space” encapsulates that. I love how repetitive the chorus is – it completely sums up exactly how I was feeling at the time, this frustration and helplessness. 

TB: What song on the record went through the most versions to get it to where it is now?

EG: I think “Swimming” did! It’s a funny song – it’s the same chords all the way through, with no real “chorus” moment. I was really adamant that the song feels like listening to a story, and that the story should have these sonic peaks and troughs that reflect how the lyrics are moving. I was listening to a lot of LCD Soundsystem at the time and they do this so well. 

“Angel Face” also went through a few different versions – I was so obsessed with having this massive sound-wall moment towards the end that took a few passes to get exactly right. 

TB: Now I have to know… what final girl do you most resonate with? 

EG: Omg. That is a GREAT QUESTION! I think a lot about Dani from Midsommar. I know there’s been a lot of discourse surrounding her and whether or not this movie is some kind of feminist exercise – but weirdly, the Dani I most relate to is the version of her at the very, very beginning of the film, before anything happens, in a relationship that’s kind of flailing. That’s what really endeared me to her. 

“Final Girl” is out now!