On July 2, Billie Eilish shared a rendition of “Listen Before I Go” on TikTok, but it was an atypical sort of performance. The video was a duet of a clip from UK vocal coach and pianist Sheridan Coldstream, in which he instructs vocalists to sing the song while he plays it on piano. He also noted that there’s a part of the song where they might want to try a vocal approach different than the one Eilish takes on the album version.
@billieeilish #duet with @sheridan_coldstream
Well, as Eilish sang along to the song, she took Coldstream’s advice, which had an emotional impact on him.
In a new BBC interview about the video, Coldstream said, “There’s a bit in the song where she normally goes down. I suggested that some singers may want to take it higher and she did exactly that, so I was gobsmacked. It was immensely exciting and I found the whole thing very moving; it made me tear up several times.”
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He also said of his initial reaction to the video, “I was gobsmacked. Came inside, shouted upstairs to my daughter who was in her bedroom. I said, ‘Guess what? You know that Billie Eilish duet I uploaded?’ She went, ‘Yes yes.’ I wanted maximum impact on this. And she said, ‘What, what?’ I said, ‘Guess who’s duetted it?’ ‘I don’t know, dad!’ I said, ‘Billie Eilish,’ and her response was words I can’t really repeat on TV.”