Phineas O'Connell
Appearances
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Well, I think the three-layered answer to that is Billy and I have always gotten along great and really liked spending time together.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
I'm sure being homeschooled impacted that because we had a relationship that might have been more three-dimensional than if we were in separate grades and saw each other a little bit on the weekend and saw each other a little bit while we did our homework or something. We spent a lot of time together having nuanced conversations. That's number one in terms of wanting to spend time with her.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Number two is she had a really beautiful voice. And so I think even in addition to liking her as a presence in my life, I saw her talent and respected her talent. And then the third one is I needed a guinea pig. The third one is I was an amateur producer trying my best to record anyone And so, you know, Billy as a 13 year old who basically never sung into a microphone at all, you know, obliged.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And it was kind of a good match. The kind of backstory is, you know, I was in this band. I loved music from the time I was, you know, born and then wanted to be a musician professionally from the time I was about 12 and played in bands all through high school. And sort of as I started to learn more about how to produce, I got more interested in pop music and alternative music and
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
I had this friend who knew that I was in a band and he was like, hey, you produce, right? His name was Frank. He was like, you produce, right? And I kind of was like, I mean, not very well. I was able to see that I was pretty lackluster. And he was like, great, I'm sure you're going to be great. I need you to produce some songs I'm going to do. And he was also very green, but he just gassed me up.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
He just believed that I was more talented than I was and I'd play something and he'd be like, that's incredible, bro. And that really gave me all this confidence that I would never have otherwise had. And, you know, Billie too. I was making music with Billie in my bedroom and being, you know, trying my best, and she was kind about it. She was like, oh, I like that. She liked Ocean Eyes.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
You know, I think that I got so much positive reinforcement when I really needed it. When I find out people have had careers in the arts when they were actively discouraged... When you hear somebody say, oh man, my mom hated my voice, I'm always kind of blown away because to me, I had enough self-doubt and enough...
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
you know, um, imposter syndrome that, that if anyone had said, you're not very good, I would have been like, correct. I agree. Um, you know, let me, let me stop doing this now. And it really took people like Billy and people like my friend Frank to be like, no, no, no, you're better than you think you are. Um, to, to kind of give me the confidence that I needed.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Probably like the body equivalent of like, you know, money doesn't buy you happiness or something where you're like, Looking the way I thought I wanted to look doesn't make me happy either.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Sure. We had just finished making Billie's album and it was about to come out. And I knew that this, you know, multi-year world tour was on the horizon for her and that I wouldn't be on it. I was just sort of thinking about my relationship with her and how kind of public our family had become. And, you know, she's a public figure. I'm a lesser public figure and
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
There's a lot of attention and judgment paid to us both, and especially to Billy, and it's just sort of a rumination on that.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Mom and dad are out of town The two of us are grown-ups now Pepper had to be put down Hard to take, hard to own Not hard to break a collarbone A little late but not alone And you're only 22 And the world is watching you Judging everything you do That's Family Feud from Phineas' new album for Cryin' Out Loud.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Yeah, like the production and the. I would say that I do plenty of it, but Billy is deeply involved. And I would say that as time has gone on, Billie has become kind of more knowledgeable and articulate about what she likes and what she doesn't in, uh, instrumental arrangement and production and vocal arrangement.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
So, um, we're either brainstorming stuff together or at the very least she's reacting to, you know, what I do in a kind of a, I like that go further. I don't, I'm not crazy about that. You know, take that out kind of a sense, if that makes sense.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
The diner is a slight anomaly in terms of the way that Billy and I most commonly work. I would say the way that we most commonly work is I sit down with a guitar or I sit down at a piano and I play chords and Billy sings melodies and we come up with lyrics and melodies together over top of chords.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
In the case of the diner, on my own, I had made what became sort of most of the instrumental of the diner. I'd been sitting around one day playing that sort of...
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
sampled re-articulated horn thing um you take kind of a one track of a of a horn being played and then you load it onto a keyboard and the horn is then chromatic on the keyboard and you play the that's me playing piano but through a horn sample um and then i programmed drum samples, and then bass samples. Or I guess not bass samples, but bass synthesizers over top of that.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And I presented it to Billie. And then she riffed, you know, these super menacing, cool lyrics over top of it.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Well, I think if I go back to the kind of genesis of this, first of all, we lived together. We both lived at home with our parents when we started making music. I was 18 and Billy was 13. And over the ensuing years, even after I moved out into my own place as a 21-year-old, we still made most of the music in the bedroom in my childhood home. And as time went on and Billy's tour became...
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
more and more heavy lift. She started to need to be more kind of diligent about how much vocal rest and physical rest she was getting on the road, which meant that we were making less music on the road. And the sort of turn of the tide there was that we would come off the
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And then we'd kind of have a detox at home where we would have just spent every day together for several months and we'd kind of chill out. And then we'd sort of reconvene and start making new music. And then we'd go back out on the road. And so it just became a kind of a version of like, wow, this is going to dominate every minute of my life.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
And I feel that I'm really not the best pianist, guitarist, backup singer accompanist for Billie. That's not the thing that is my sort of special skill there. My special skill is being able to write and record songs with her. And so if I am picking between the two and I have other stuff on my plate, I'll pick making the album every time.
Fresh Air
Billie Eilish & Finneas
Yeah, I'm four years older. So I would say that I didn't have much of a kind of a, feeling one way or the other about the the age or gender of the Predominant audience I had a real sense of gratitude for their enthusiasm and You know the audience that was coming to the shows that Billy was playing couldn't have been more engaged and enthusiastic and
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
Yeah, I'm four years older. So I would say that I didn't have much of a kind of a, feeling one way or the other about the age or gender of the predominant audience, I had a real sense of gratitude for their enthusiasm. And the audience that was coming to the shows that Billy was playing couldn't have been more engaged and enthusiastic
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
Sure. We had just finished making Billie's album and it was about to come out. And I knew that this multi-year world tour was on the horizon for her and that I wouldn't be on it. I was just sort of thinking about my relationship with her and how kind of public... our family had become, and, you know, she's a public figure, I'm a lesser public figure.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
There's a lot of attention and judgment paid to us both, and especially to Billy, and it's just sort of a rumination on that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
Yeah, like the production and the. I would say that I do plenty of it, but Billy is deeply involved. And I would say that as time has gone on, Billie has become kind of more knowledgeable and articulate about what she likes and what she doesn't in, uh, instrumental arrangement and production and vocal arrangement.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
So, um, we're either brainstorming stuff together or at the very least she's reacting to, you know, what I do in a kind of a, I like that go further. I don't, I'm not crazy about that. You know, take that out kind of a sense, if that makes sense.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
The diner is a slight anomaly in terms of the way that Billy and I most commonly work. I would say the way that we most commonly work is I sit down with a guitar or I sit down at a piano and I play chords and Billy sings melodies and we come up with lyrics and melodies together over top of chords.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
In the case of the diner, on my own, I had made what became sort of most of the instrumental of the diner. I'd been sitting around one day playing that sort of
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
um sampled re-articulated horn thing um you take kind of a one track of a of a horn being played and then you load it onto a keyboard and the horn is then chromatic on the keyboard and you play the that's me playing piano but through a horn sample um and then i programmed drum samples, and then bass samples. Or I guess not bass samples, but bass synthesizers over top of that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And I presented it to Billie. And then she riffed, you know, these super menacing, cool lyrics over top of it.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
Well, I think if I go back to the kind of genesis of this, first of all, we lived together. We both lived at home with our parents when we started making music. I was 18 and Billy was 13. And over the ensuing years, even after I moved out into my own place as a 21-year-old, we still made most of the music in the bedroom in my childhood home. And as time went on and Billy's tour became...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
more and more heavy lift. She started to need to be more kind of diligent about how much vocal rest and physical rest she was getting on the road, which meant that we were making less music on the road. And the sort of turn of the tide there was that we would come off the road and had made nothing new
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And then we'd kind of have a detox at home where we would have just spent every day together for several months and we'd kind of chill out. And then we'd sort of reconvene and start making new music. And then we'd go back out on the road. And so it just became a kind of a version of like, wow, this is going to dominate every minute of my life.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Billie Eilish & Finneas / The Colbert Cookbook
And I feel that I'm really not the best pianist, guitarist, backup singer accompanist for Billie. That's not the thing that is my sort of special skill there. My special skill is being able to write and record songs with her. And so if I am picking between the two and I have other stuff on my plate, I'll pick making the album every time.