Billie Eilish sampled 'The Office' and the creators had no idea – Rolling Stone



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"Threat level midnight" is an under-estimated half-hour of Office. The episode, aired in February 2011, is one of the most conceptual stories in the series: a meta-exercise in which characters watch a fake film they have themselves made, based on a storyline that they had discovered five seasons earlier. This is a fictional secret agent named Michael Scarn, starring Michael Scott and Steve Carell. The disco music of the 70s, pop-rap Will Smith-esque and coordinated dances are at the rendezvous. At the time, "Threat Level Midnight" was a daring move from an in-depth show. It's now part of a number one pop album.

Nearly ten years after the broadcast of the episode, Billie Eilish decided to sample one of her strangest moments at "My Strange Addiction," a song from her debut album, When we fall asleep, where are we going?, which has just marked the second best month of the year, after Ariana Grande. In case you have not seen "Threat Level Midnight", Agent Michael Scarn has organized a "Scarn Dance" in the film-in-a-sitcom. Eilish uses Scarn-Dance-related dMichael Scott (Steve Carell), Jim Halpert (John Krasinski), Ryan Howard (BJ Novak) and Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling) to introduce the song, then bring them back to act as an interlude while punctuating the deafening heavy track.

"When we beat for" my strange addiction, "it reminded me of the song they play when they do Scarn dancing," Eilish told MTV News. "I thought it was really funny, so we literally extracted the audio file from Netflix and put it in the song, not at all thinking that they'd say yes and we'd be able to get it out In addition, it is strange addictions, and Office is mine, so … "The song has since generated nearly 25 million streams on Spotify only. This is the sixth most popular song of When we fall asleep, where are we going?, according to Buzzangle. Most of the songs that go beyond it are singles released for months.

Creators, actors and writers of Office I did not know that all of this was going to happen.

"Threat Level Midnight" was the last wish of Steve Carell, who was about to leave the series after his seventh season. B.J. Novak – screenwriter, executive producer and actor who played the role of Ryan Howard – was the man who had helped Carell achieve his last wish. He told the writers, "Before leaving, I'd like to see you finally Threat level midnight, Explains Novak by phone. "We mentioned it in Season 2, in an episode where the characters had staged Michael's screenplay Threat level midnight. It really survived in our minds as some of our favorite canons who Michael Scott was and what was funny about him. I voluntarily engaged in this task, because I always liked this episode. It was really my sense of humor and I had the task of writing it.

Eve Nelson, OfficeThe producer of the song gets tired by remembering the emails she received from the series' writers for this episode. Previously, she had worked with cast members on songs, but the new demands were integral to selling the film's nonsense for Michael Scott's home.

"They said," Can you give us a real authentic disco, a kind of Seventies sound? Said Nelson. "I think they talked about Chic."

One of the main challenges in making Threat Level Midnight was the very idea of Threat level midnight. Daniel Chun, co-executive producer of Season 7, launched the initial idea of ​​a rap that would end the show, but the room was struggling to decide on the construction of a movie in a show.

"We were going into Michael's imagination, which was very exciting for us as writers," says Chun. "I remember one of the biggest conversations we had on this was the question: does the episode have to talk about Michael showing them Threat level midnight? Or is it simply that the episode is Threat level midnight? Basically, will there be a framing device around the movie, where we will see people watching the movie and reacting to it? Where are we literally right, from the credits of Office, showing the movie?

In the end, the writers went with the old. "It's just a silly movie that Michael did, so the drama will not be a real drama," says Chun. "The stakes of the characters are not going to be real issues of character. We just felt that for people to really get involved emotionally, you had to stick with the "real characters" and not the quote fictions. Threat level midnight. "

Novak says he had already had Eilish's "Bury a Friend" hit in a playlist before the request to taste his voice was received, but he was not very familiar with the rest of his work. "They had to get the approval of everyone involved," says Novak. (This means that Steve Carell also had to approve his voice before the release of the song – Steve Carell did not respond to a request for comment.) "I was fine though," says Novak, but I'm not sure. 39 was like Wow, bonus: it's a banger.

Chun was even more surprised. "Until you told me about her, I did not know who she was," he says. "It's not a hit for Billie Eilish, it's more a comment on my age. It was a double whammy: to learn the existence of someone, then to learn that they were using [the episode]. I watched the song and I loved it. That's good. "

But Nelson, who composed the music of the episode, was ecstatic. She is a strong supporter of Billie and seems sincerely shocked that Eilish and his company are inspired by his work.

"I can not say enough about this girl," she says. "She is for me one of the best young artists of today. She takes risks. She is herself. She goes to her own drummer. I love what she did with that. I thought it was brilliant. I could hear that she was slightly inspired by the pace. I respect her and admire her a lot. I am honored to have inspired Billie Eilish. "

"One of the most amusing meta-jokes is that, in Michael Scott's delirium, it would of course be sampled on a Number One album and performed during touchdown zone dances," Novak adds. "You know that in Michael Scott's delusional fantasy that would happen, and in a way, in the real world."

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