Billie Eilish’s CHIHIRO Lyrics Explained: Meaning, Video Symbolism, and Hidden References

She doesn’t give you a map. She gives you a door. And on Chihiro, Billie Eilish lingers just long enough for you to hear the lock shift without ever letting you see what’s behind it.

Released on 17 May 2024 as part of Hit Me Hard and Soft, the song takes its title from the protagonist of Spirited Away.

Chihiro, co-written and produced by Billie and her brother Finneas, draws its name and thematic inspiration from the lead character in Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning film, Spirited Away.

But this isn’t a fan letter to Studio Ghibli. It’s an emotional haze where memories don’t behave and desire dissolves before it can speak clearly.

“Open up the door, can you open up the door?” Billie asks, over and over.

Not pleading, not demanding. Just circling. The refrain lands like a knock you’re not sure you want answered.

One that might not even be real. Listeners have compared it to chasing someone through a house in a dream. Except in this one, every time you turn the corner, they’ve already left.

The lyrics feel like flashbacks that don’t match up. “Saw your seat at the counter when I looked away / You turned around, but it wasn’t your face.”

A moment of déjà vu collapsing into doubt. The kind of memory that shows up unwanted and edits itself while you’re still watching.

FINNEAS produces the track like a mirage. The bassline paces, then halts. Synths ripple without resolution.

It’s been described by fans as walking through a half-rendered video game, or floating inside a room you used to know.

The track doesn’t build. It drifts. The dissonance becomes a kind of rhythm in itself.

In interviews, Billie hinted that Chihiro comes partly from the character’s perspective and partly her own.

Chihiro, in Spirited Away, forgets the people she’s loved as she returns to the real world.

Billie’s version doesn’t forget, but it does lose shape. “But you’re still in my mind / In a different light.”

That shift in tone, from presence to distortion, is where the real emotional weight sits. Not heartbreak. Displacement.

The video, directed by Billie, picks up the thread but doesn’t pull it tight.

It begins in a grey corridor, where she and actor Nat Wolff lock eyes. What follows isn’t a chase.

It’s a physical conversation where meaning never settles. They run, they wrestle, they circle each other through a sterile, school-like building that feels more like a clinic for regret than a memory.

According to the press release, the labyrinth of halls and slamming doors was designed to represent “different corners of the mind.”

By the time they reach the field, the tone has already shifted.

They’re no longer fighting, but they aren’t connecting either. It’s not tenderness.

It’s two people touching because they don’t know what else to do.

One fan described it as watching a couple act out the memory of their closeness after the emotion has already left the room.

Another noted the disconnect in rhythm: “The yin and the yang of relationships… we can’t ever just vibe to the same groove.”

That line feels embedded in the video. Their movements don’t match.

Their reactions aren’t mirrored. It’s not conflict or affection. It’s asymmetry. A loop of push and pull that never resolves.

Nat Wolff later joked about filming it: “By take three of this running shot, both of our childhood asthmas were acting up.”

But even in that breathless exhaustion, you can sense the point. This isn’t a story about reaching someone.

It’s what happens when you try to chase someone through your own mind, and they only exist in the version you’re projecting.

“Take my love away,” she sings. “When I come back around, will I know what to say?”

Some have linked this lyric to Chihiro forgetting Haku, the boy she loved but couldn’t remember.

Others hear it as a dissociated relationship monologue when the memory of someone becomes more powerful than the person ever was.

The doors throughout the song don’t open to reveal anything. They just keep moving. Open, shut, gone.

Live, the song debuted during Billie’s tour opener in Quebec on 29 September 2024, alongside The Diner and Blue.

Even in that setting, Chihiro stood out as a moment that didn’t invite applause. It invited pause. Like standing at a threshold and forgetting what you came to say.

The question the track circles isn’t whether the love is still there. It’s whether she even recognises the version of herself who once asked for it.

When she repeats “Do you think about it?” it’s not aimed at someone else. It’s what you ask when you’re trying to recall what it felt like to care.

The final image of the video lingers. Two figures, distant in posture but locked in frame.

By then, the field doesn’t feel free. It feels like a memory without a timestamp. Like a dream that rewrites itself each time you wake up.

What if Chihiro isn’t about letting go or holding on? What if it’s what happens when you realise the door never had anything behind it in the first place?

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Billie Eilish Chihiro Lyrics

Verse 1
To take my love away
When I come back around, will I know what to say?
Said you won’t forget my name
Not today, not tomorrow
Kind of strange, feelin’ sorrow
I got change (Yup), you could borrow (Borrow)
When I come back around, will I know what to say?
Not today, maybe tomorrow

Chorus
Open up the door, can you open up the door?
I know you said before you can’t cope with any more
You told me it was war, said you’d show me what’s in store
I hope it’s not for sure, can you open up the door?

Refrain
Did you take
My love away
From me? Me
Me

Verse 2
Saw your seat at the counter when I looked away
Saw you turn around, but it wasn’t your face
Said, “I need to be alone now, I’m takin’ a break”
How come when I rеturned, you were gonе away?

Bridge
I don’t, I don’t know why I called
I don’t know you at all
I don’t know you
Not at all
I don’t, I don’t know why I called
I don’t know you at all
I don’t know you

Refrain
Did you take
My love away
From me? Me

Interlude
And that’s when you found me

Verse 3
I was waitin’ in the garden
Contemplatin’, beg your pardon
But there’s a part of me that recognizes you
Do you feel it too?
When you told me it was serious
Were you serious? Mm
They told me they were only curious
Now it’s serious, mm

Chorus
Open up the door, can you open up the door?
I know you said before you can’t cope with any more
You told me it was war, said you’d show me what’s in store
I hope it’s not for sure, can you open up the door?

Post-Chorus
Wringing my hands in my lap
And you tell me it’s all been a trap
And you don’t know if you’ll make it back
I said, “No, don’t say that”

Outro
(Wringing my hands in my lap)
(Tell me it’s all been a trap)
(And you don’t know if you’ll make it back)
(I said, “No, don’t say that”)
(Wringing my hands in my lap)
(Tell me it’s all been a trap)
(And you don’t know if you’ll make it back)
(No, don’t say that)
Hm-hm