It shouldn't be surprising that Phineas is a great interview. Like his sister, Billie Eilish, he's incredibly engaging and charming, and is more than willing to sit down and dive into his creative process, whether it's Eilish's excellent new album, Hit with hard and soft, his solo work or concert for television and film. We spent several hours with him about Eilish's latest Rolling rock cover theme. Last week, we shared some of the results of this story — but there's even more. Here's everything Finneas revealed to us about his next solo move and more.
He is working on a new solo album.
Finneas told us he's set to dive into his next solo record this year – the follow-up to his 2021 debut, Optimistic. He built the predecessor on his own during the early stages of the pandemic, so he plans to enlist some helping hands this time around. “I made my last album completely alone in a room,” he said. “And that was satisfying to a degree, because I just worked on it until it sounded the way I wanted it to sound. But it was really lonely and I didn't feel like, “This is the best possible way it could sound, I'm so glad I made it on my own.” I thought I did a good job. So on this album, I've said I have to be super-collaborative. Luckily, most of my friends are producers.”
He was also in the studio with Jack Harlow and Sara Bareilles.
At the time of our interview in late February, Finneas said he had just hung out with the top Kentucky rapper in the studio. “He's my friend,” Phineas said. “He's a sweet guy.” She also had plans to work with Bareilles after the Oscars in March. “I will do whatever he wants,” he said. “If she wants to write about her thing or a musical. But if it goes, “What should we do?” I'll say, “Let's write about my thing.” Because I want to be super cooperative. I have learned more from it.”
He is not surprised to hear his sister's love songs.
You might think Finneas feels a little creeped out when he creates his sister's most intimate lyrics — like this line in “The Greatest,” where Eilish sings, “All the times I've waited/For you to want me naked.” But she said he treats her just like any other musician he works with. “The only way I can describe it is that I just see her as a person,” he said. “I've never had a relationship [or] I came out with whoever I'm working with, and writing any song like that, I have to let them be extremely intimate and vulnerable. So it's no more weird than with any artist I work with. [But] if he was shooting some super spontaneous piece of content, that would be something I'd skip.”
He never wants to be a workaholic.
“That's one thing I don't have the same appetite for that other people have,” he said. “I don't want to spend my life like this. The days are getting a little longer. If I'm in the studio and the sun is setting outside, I leave. I want to be outside. I like to think I have a good work ethic and I meet my deadlines and don't flake out, but I'm not a workaholic. I don't want to die like this. I like to make music, but I'll do it when I'm bored and have free time. I don't have to do it at the cost of everything.”
He cited a recent example when he was working on the score for Alfonso Cuarón's upcoming Apple TV+ series Denial of responsibility at the same time that Hard and soft. “I'm very proud of the work, but I felt that both people wished I had more time to spend on it,” he said. “If I take another scoring job like this, I'm not going to make a record while I'm doing it, and vice versa. When Billie and I do her next album, a great opportunity will come along, hopefully, and I'll be like, no. I don't want to hate myself. I just want to enjoy doing it.”
He's fine with the idea of Billie making records with someone else someday.
Can Finneas ever see a world where the reunited sibling duo escape no cooperate? “I was thinking about that,” he said. “I really want to always be at her service. I think what it would take is for him to want to work in a way that I advocated but couldn't deliver. You know what I mean?” She offers an example of a situation where she might step aside: “Let's pretend I had a kid and we worked on an album and she immediately wanted to do another one. I can imagine a world where I was like, 'I have to be current parent' or something. But that's so far, and even then I'd still be like, 'I'll be involved any way you want.'” And he adds, “I hope she'll just continue to make an album with me.”
He's happy they made the new album the way they wanted…
Hard and soft it was done differently than Eilish's first two albums. Instead of working on one song at a time and only continuing when it was finished, the brothers worked in chunks, putting a few songs on hold and revisiting them when they felt ready. “A big flaw in doing one song at a time is that, on the last song, the first song you did is a year old,” Eilish told me. “What was really, really great about making this album was that everything moved at the same pace.”
The result of this, however, was that her label, Interscope, and her management only heard half of the record last summer, because the rest was still in various states of completion. (They got the full release at the top of this year.) Finneas considered sending a letter thanking the company's CEO, John Janick, for allowing them creative freedom. “I was like, 'I don't think most people are allowed to operate that way,'” Finneas recalled. “We love these guys and they're really generous and kind to us, but Billie is legally signed to them. They could, if they wanted to, say, “We're not pulling this off unless we're involved every step of the way and A&R it.” … So basically I was thanking him. I was like, “It's really cool that we got to make this album the way an indie artist would make an album.”
…and he knows that the result may not be to everyone's liking.
Finneas may have 10 Grammys under his belt, but that doesn't mean he wasn't worried about his reception Hard and soft. “I had this thought last night, like, 'Oh, people might really hate this, right?'” he said. “I don't, and it's the album I wanted to make and it's the album [Billie] wanted to make, and I'm really proud of it, and our friends like it. But I had this feeling, “We might have made JNCO Jeans.” We might have taken a real swing. We'll see.” (Thankfully, so far the early reaction to the album has made it clear that they did not make the musical equivalent of '90s extra-wide leg jeans.)
He recognized that the beloved Barbie hit “What Was I Made For?” it was an incredibly accessible ballad. “It's quite a traditional song, and this album is not traditional,” he said. “It can run the risk of people saying, 'I don't understand this at all.' [But] if they don't get it, they shouldn't pretend to.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/finneas-cover-story-outtakes-billie-eilish-1235023098/
