In Family Feudsong taken from his second album, For Cryin’ Out Loud!released on October 4, Finneas O’Connell recalls his close relationship with his sister, Billie Eilish. « A part of me is part of you/ Just a different shade of blue » (“a part of me is a part of you/just a different shade of blue”). And also what distinguishes this 27-year-old multi-instrumentalist singer from the millennial icon, four years his junior, for whom he co-signed and co-produced three albums and some of the most notable hits of the last five years (Bad Guy, Bury a Friend, Everything I Wanted, Your Power, No Time to Die, What Was I Made For?…). A “shade of blue” that can be interpreted as a shade of blues.
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Because where the little sister tends to brood by singing about her anxiety and self-destructive discomfort, the big brother distills, solo, a pop with a lighter melancholy, a spleen more enlightened than crushed by the sun of his California native. Less introspective than those of Billie Eilish, the songs of For Cryin’ Out Loud! were, he said, “inspired by [sa] family and [ses] close friends.” When the heartaches recounted in titles like Starfucker or Same Old Story refer to old memories. “It’s been a long time since I had a heartbreak”he jokes on the phone, this October 3, during an exchange from his home in Los Angeles. “I have been living happily as a couple for several years”specifies the companion of the American influencer, actress and director Claudia Sulewski.
Group dynamics
While Billie and Finneas are used to working in self-sufficient isolation and the composer-producer’s debut album, Optimist (2021), was conceived alone, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, in his home studio, it is a group dynamic that shaped this second solo album. “I wrote most of this record in March 2024recalls the singer. The idea was to bring together five musician friends and complete these songs based on what was happening live in a studio bigger than the one I have at home. »
After long months spent finalizing Hit Me Hard and SoftBillie Eilish’s latest album, released in May, Finneas thus reconnected with his own discography by banking on the immediacy of jam sessions with a group of friends. Musicians familiar with pop or indie rock productions, guitarist Matthew Fildey, bassist Aron Forbes, drummer Miles Morris and keyboardists David Marinelli and Lucy Healy followed as much as guided a singer alternating sentimental ballads (Little Window, Starfucker, Same Old Story, For Cryin’ Out Loud!…) and removed refrains (Cleats, 2001, Lotus Eater, Sweet Cherries…). Less electro and smoother than the macabre little games composed with his sister, these pieces demonstrate no less a melodic know-how and a enthusiasm not far from flirting with the pop-funk-rock variety of the ex- One Direction Harry Styles.
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