You may know him in reference to his global sensation of a sister, Billie Eilish, and their collaborative efforts and music world takeover this year. You may have seen him accompanying her live as her guitarist and pianist. You may even know him for his solo material. In whatever capacity you know him in; Finneas O’Connell aka FINNEAS is definitely on your radar.
2019 has seen the release of Eilish’s record-breaking debut album, ‘When We Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?’ as co-written and produced by O’Connell, viral meme’s spawning from ‘Bad Guy’, globetrotting tours, standout Coachella and AMA performances, six Grammy Award nominations including Album of the Year, collaborations with Jack White, the debut solo album release for ‘Blood Harmony’ and the release of Eilish’s ‘everything i wanted’. To say the year has been intense is an understatement, but O’Connell is in good spirits.
“I feel very fulfilled and I feel very excited to be writing new music and telling more stories,” O’Connell says. “We didn’t necessarily ask to be famous, we asked to have our music heard, and fame is like a side effect and so sometimes it makes you feel unwanted which is a scary feeling because you think ‘I don’t know how to turn this off and I don’t know how to stop people wanting to take photos with me at the airport’. Maybe I’m feeling depressed and I don’t want to disappoint people and those feelings can be stressful but you just have to kind of remember the benefits are higher than the cons. We’re trying our best.”
Thankfully, O’Connell is in the right industry to express his emotions, honing all of it into his songwriting. Upon listening to ‘Blood Harmony’ you will be smacked in the face with O’Connell’s raw take on the implications of fame, particularly notable on opening track, ‘I Lost A Friend’ with line, “you’re making a little too much money to be 20 and sad”.
“It’s just a sad group of songs really. I’m super happy but when I wrote that line there were great things happening to me then and one of the issues is when you don’t think you have any place to be complaining about things because there’s so much great stuff happening to you and you’re like ‘who am I to complain, people have real problems’, but it’s always good to talk about how you’re feeling no matter the situation you’re in. [Songwriting] is the best form of therapy in the world. I go to therapy too and I think a lot of the time the music that I have made is more therapeutic than going to therapy,” he laughs.
That content further spawns from finding his individual voice as a solo artist. While the sibling collaboration works seamlessly to enhance Eilish’s performer identity, O’Connell had to adopt a solo dynamic for Blood Harmony, which proved more challenging.
“When Billie and I work together she brings so much to the table and she has such great opinions and ideas and I’m trying to make something that she loves and I think when it was just me trying to make music that I’m making music for myself that I have to feel really passionately about, I was actually like, ‘well do I love this? Is this who I am? Am I being honest? Am I telling the truth?’; it was kind of a stressful process.”
A process that he is slowly getting used to, writing constantly for both projects with 2020 looking good for both Billie Eilish and FINNEAS fans.
“There will definitely be a lot more music in the next 12 months!”
Blood Harmony is out now.
Written by Tammy Walters