Billie Eilish thought she’d always have a soft voice. Singing lessons changed that

Transcript:

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. My guests are Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. As you probably know, they’re siblings who write songs together. She sings on their albums; he produces and plays several instruments. They’ve been writing and recording together since she was 13 and he was 18. Considering the number of records they’ve broken in the last few years, they’re more than popular. They’re a phenomenon. Their album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” was the second in Grammy history to win in the major categories – best record, album, song and new artist all in the same year.

Finneas was the youngest person to receive a Grammy for producer of the year nonclassical. Billie was the youngest to win two Oscars, one for the theme for the Bond film, “No Time To Die,” and another for “What Was I Made For?” from the “Barbie” movie. She collaborated on both songs with Finneas. They’re continuing to break records. Billie was the youngest most-listened-to artist on Spotify this year. Their latest album, “Hit Me Hard And Soft,” is now nominated for seven Grammys, including all the major categories. Each of its tracks reached over 150 million streams on Spotify.

Finneas also has an independent career as a producer and recording artist. His second solo album was recently released, called “For Crying Out Loud.” Billie spent her teen years in front of her fans and the press. In 2019, music critic John Perelas wrote in the New York Times, Eilish, age 17, has spent the last few years establishing herself as the negation of what a female teen pop star used to be. She doesn’t play innocent or ingratiating or flirtatious or perky or cute. Instead, she’s sullen, depressive, death-haunted, sly, analytical and confrontational, all without raising her voice. Let’s start with a song from “Hit Me Hard And Soft.” This is “L’amour De Ma Vie,” which is French for the love of my life.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE”)

BILLIE EILISH: (Singing) I wish you the best for the rest of your life – felt sorry for you when I looked in your eyes. But I need to confess I told you a lie. I said you, you were the love of my life, the love of my life. Did I break your heart? Did I waste your time? I tried to be there for you. Then you tried to break mine. It isn’t asking for a lot for an apology for making me feel it’d kill you if I tried to leave. You said you’d never fall in love again because of me. Then you moved on immediately. (Vocalizing).

GROSS: Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell, welcome to FRESH AIR. It’s a pleasure to have you on the show. Billie, it strikes me you’re singing more in a fuller voice. What’s changing about your voice and how you choose to use it?

EILISH: Well, you know, we started making music when I was about 13. And as most 13-year-olds, I had not, you know, grown into my body and my voice and all the things that you age into as a human. And I always – you know, it’s funny. Like, when things like that happen at a young age, you kind of have this idea that that’s how things are going to be forever. And so in my mind, at the time, my voice was going to sound like it did then forever. I thought it was going to be soft, and my range wasn’t going to be, like, very big. And I wasn’t ever going to be able to belt, and I wasn’t ever going to be able to, you know, have much of a chest mix in my voice.

And, you know, I spent many years touring and singing and doing shows, and my voice matured and started to change. And in the making of “Hit Me Hard And Soft,” I started working with a singing teacher, which I hadn’t done since I was a kid in my choir. And I kind of always, like, felt hesitant to and kind of embarrassed to somehow. And it completely has just honestly changed my life. And, I mean, I’ve just – my voice has just gotten, you know, 10 times better in the last two years. And what’s amazing is it’s just going to keep getting better.

GROSS: Did you want to do a whispery voice? Was that, like, a style choice or just, like, that’s the – where your voice is?

EILISH: No, that’s just how I sang. That’s what’s funny about it. I just – you know, I was, like, I couldn’t really do much else. Like, I didn’t have the range. I didn’t have the strength in my vocal chords and my breathing, you know? And think about, you know, how your voice sounded when you were a kid opposed to now. It’s a completely different thing.

GROSS: Yeah. And, Finneas, I assume you do the arrangements.

FINNEAS O’CONNELL: Yeah, like, the production and the instrumental arrangement. I would say that I do plenty of it, but Billie 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 instrumental arrangement and production and vocal arrangement. So we’re either brainstorming stuff together, or at the very least, she’s reacting to, you know, what I do and 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.

GROSS: I want to play a track because I like the instrumentation – the arrangement – so much. And it’s called “The Diner.” So, Finneas, do you want to say a little bit about the instrumental track of this?

O’CONNELL: “The Diner” is a slight anomaly in terms of the way that Billie 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 Billie sings melodies. And we come up with lyrics and melodies together over top of chords.

In the case of “The Diner,” on my own, I had made the – what became sort of most of the instrumental of “The Diner.” I’d been sitting around one day, playing that sort of sampled rearticulated horn thing. You take kind of a one track 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 (vocalizing). That’s me playing piano but through a horn sample. And then I programmed drum samples and then bass samples or, I guess, not bass samples but bass synthesizers over top of that. And I presented it to Billie, and then she riffed, you know, these super-menacing, cool lyrics over top of it.

GROSS: So let’s hear “The Diner.”

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “THE DINER”)

EILISH: (Singing) Don’t be afraid of me. I’m what you need. I saw you on the screens. I know we’re meant to be. You’re starring in my dreams, in magazines. You’re looking right at me. I’m here around the clock. I’m waiting on your block, but please don’t tell the cops. They’ll make me stop, and I just want to talk. Bet I could change your life. You could be my wife, could get into a fight. I’ll say you’re right, and you’ll kiss me goodnight. I waited on the corner till I saw the sitter leave – was easy getting over, and I landed on my feet. I came in through the kitchen, looking for something to eat. I left a calling card so they would know that it was me.

GROSS: That was “The Diner” from the new Billie Eilish album “Hit Me Hard And Soft.” And my guests are Billie Eilish and Finneas. Finneas, you’re not on all of the current tour that Billie is on, and you’ve just released your second solo album. Does that have significant meaning in terms of the nature of your music partnership?

O’CONNELL: 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 Billie was 13. And over the ensuing, you know, 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 Billie’s tour became a 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.

And then we’d kind of have a detox at home, where we would, you know, 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 kind of a version of, like, wow, this is going to dominate every minute of my life. And I feel that I’m really not the, you know, best pianist, guitarist, backup singer accompanist for Billie, you know? That’s not the thing that is my sort of special skill. 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.

GROSS: Billie, can you talk a little bit about when you were a teenager and you had all these teenagers, especially teenage girls, as, like, such dedicated fans? What was it like for you to grow up as a teenage star with so many teenage listeners kind of idolizing you? And then judging from what I’ve seen and read about you, you’ve been kind of insecure about yourself, not necessarily of your music. But, you know, for any insecurity you have, to have all these people turning you into an idol must have been – well, maybe was a little disorienting.

EILISH: Definitely. I think, though, honestly, even though it was a lot for a young brain and body to deal with, in a way, the fact that I was a teenager and they were also teenagers somehow felt less kind of – I don’t know. I think I just felt so connected to them because we were all the same age. And, you know, I think it can be really hard when you’re an adult and you have fans that are children to you or, you know, way older than you. Like, I think that something about us all kind of feeling like we were growing up together was, like, honestly, comforting to me. And also, I didn’t really have many friends for a couple of years.

GROSS: Well, you were homeschooled, so it’s not like you were hanging out in the schoolyard or, you know, in the classrooms with your peers.

EILISH: Well, so this is what’s interesting – is we were homeschooled. We didn’t go to school. But Finneas and I both had so many friends growing up. And we did so many things. And there was no shortage of friends. There was no shortage of activities and, you know, things to do, which I think can be surprising for people to hear, because they kind of think, like, well, then how did you meet them? And, you know, we had all sorts of things we did. I was part of a choir, and I was in a dance company. And we did aerial arts, and I rode horses, and I did gymnastics. And I acted, and Finneas acted. And I was in a – you know, there were so many things that were social for us.

And honestly, when I became famous-ish at 14, it was not a good time in terms of, like, keeping friendships. I think when you’re 14, that’s kind of an age where friendships are already kind of rocky. And also all my friends did go to school. So, like, they were all going to high school. And suddenly I had no way of relating to anyone. And I kind of lost all my friends. And I maintained a couple, but those were really challenging to keep even still. And so for those few years of becoming this, like, enormous superstar, I was kind of feeling like, wait, what the hell is the point? I don’t have any friends. And I don’t have, like – like, I’m losing all the things that I love so deeply and all the people that I love. And so, in a way, the fans kind of saved me in that way because they were my age. And I felt like they were the only kind of friends I had for a while.

GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you both. If you’re just joining us, my guests are Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. And their latest album is called “Hit Me Hard And Soft.” We’ll be right back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILLIE EILISH SONG, “BLUE”)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my interview with Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. They’re brother and sister and songwriting and performing partners. And their new album is called “Hit Me Hard And Soft.”

Finneas, what’s it been like for you, especially, you know, early on when Billie was very young and you were still in your teens, your late teens? What was it like for you to have an audience dominated by teenage girls when you’re a guy and you’re also older? You know, you’re four or five years older than Billie.

O’CONNELL: Yeah, I’m four years older. So I would say that I didn’t have much of a kind of 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, you know, the audience that was coming to the shows that Billie was playing couldn’t have been more engaged and enthusiastic.

GROSS: Billie, I’ve read that some girls or, you know, young women in the audience are throwing their bras onto the stage when you perform. How often does that happen? Do you have any idea how that started?

EILISH: I mean, that’s, like, a classic.

GROSS: Well, it used to be panties that, you know, women would throw at male stars, you know?

EILISH: Right. Well, it’s funny. Like, I always envied that. I remember, like, watching, you know, videos of men performing, whoever they may be, and, you know, people throwing bras and underwear. And – you know, and I always thought, like, oh, that’s so awesome. It’s so sick. It’s so powerful. I always was just jealous of that. And I remember when I was first doing shows – you know, fans throw all sorts of things on stage. They throw gifts and presents and different flags of different kinds. And honestly, like, right away, people started throwing bras when we were all – me and the audience – 16. And I loved it. I really did.

You know, I had – I spent many years having a lot of not gender dysphoria about my own gender, but I think a lot of women go through the feeling of, you know, just envying men in any kind of way one way or the other. And for me, I would watch videos of different male performers on stage and just feel this, like, deep sadness in my body that I’ll never be able to, you know, take my shirt off on stage and run around and, like, not try very hard and, like, you know, just jump around on stage, and that’s enough and – you know, have enough energy from just myself with no backup dancers and no, you know, huge stage production. And the crowd will still love me. And that’s just, like, only a man can do that.

And because of that, I think, more than almost anything else in my career, I was very, very, very determined to kind of prove that thought wrong. And I really did. I really feel like I did. I didn’t like the kind of pop girl leotard, you know, backup dancers, hair done thing. I didn’t like that for me. I liked it for other people, but that didn’t resonate with me. I never saw myself in those people. And honestly, I never saw myself in any women that I saw onstage, but I did see myself in the men that I saw onstage. And I thought that was unfair. And so I did everything that I could to kind of try to break that within myself and the industry.

GROSS: But, you know, on a related note, you often dress, you know – on videos and in performance on stage – in really baggy clothes. And I was thinking, like, since you grew up with a lot of hip-hop, you know, in a lot of hip-hop performances on stage, and in videos, the dancers or the women in the videos are usually dressed – and especially earlier in the period when you were growing up – were dressed in, like, really tight and scanty kind of clothes. And the men are wearing, like, baggy hoodies and pants that are so baggy that they’re, like, falling down. And in that sense, did you take your cue from the men in hip-hop in terms of dress as opposed to the women?

EILISH: Yes, exactly correct. I would watch those videos. And instead of being jealous of the women who get to be around the hot men, I would be jealous of the hot men, and I wanted to be them. And I wanted to dress like them, and I wanted to, you know, be able to act like them. And to be fair, I had all sorts of women that I looked up to and artists that I – you know, are the reason that I am who I am.

And also, I wouldn’t have been able – even if I’d felt the way I did, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve it had it not been for the incredibly powerful, strong-willed women artists and people in the public eye that came before me that made it possible for me. So, like, my favorite singers are all kind of old jazz singers that I’ve always looked up to.

And I’m always forcing people to watch videos of Ella Fitzgerald singing live and Julie London singing live and, you know, Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson and all these people. We were watching these videos, and every single one, of course, because of that period of time, they’re all wearing dresses. They’re all wearing tight, you know, corseted, maybe, dresses with their hair done. But, like, they didn’t – they couldn’t just not do that. You know, that’s part of how things were then. And so thank God that those women came before me ’cause otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything.

GROSS: My guests are Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. Their latest album “Hit Me Hard And Soft” is nominated for seven Grammys. His new solo album is called “For Crying Out Loud.” We’ll talk more after a break. I’m Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER”)

EILISH: (Singing) I want you to stay till I’m in the grave, till I rot away, dead and buried. This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Let’s get back to the interview I recorded last week with Billie Eilish and Finneas, the brother-and-sister songwriting and musical partners who have become a global phenomenon. They became famous in their teens. Their latest album together, “Hit Me Hard And Soft,” is nominated for seven Grammys, including album of the year and record of the year.

I want to play “Ocean Eyes,” which is the first thing that you recorded together. You put it on SoundCloud. It went viral for reasons. I don’t understand how things by people unknown go viral, but it did. And that really…

O’CONNELL: To be honest with you, Terry…

GROSS: Yeah.

O’CONNELL: …I also don’t understand how that happened.

EILISH: I don’t understand, either.

GROSS: Good. Thank you for the validation. So I want to play that song ’cause, Billie, you were talking earlier about how, when you started recording when you were 13, you were much younger. Your voice was different. But, Finneas, I want to ask you first, I think not many teenage boys would think, like, oh, I want to hang out and write songs with and record with my younger sister who’s 13. What made you think, oh, Billie has to sing this? – ’cause I know, initially, you were going to write it for your band.

O’CONNELL: Well, I think, you know, the three-layered answer to that is Billie and I’ve always gotten along great and really liked spending time together. I’m sure being home-schooled impacted that because we had a, you know, 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, you know, spent a lot of time together, having, you know, nuanced conversations. That’s No. 1 in terms of wanting to spend time with her.

No. 2 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. You know, the third one is I was, you know, a amateur producer trying my best to record anyone. And so, you know, Billie, as a 13-year-old who’d basically never sung into a microphone at all, you know, obliged. 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.

I had this friend who knew that I was, like, in a band, and he was like, hey. You produce, right? His name is Frank. And he was like, you produce, right? And I kind of was like, I mean, not very well. I was like – you know, 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, you know, he was also very green, but he just gassed me up. 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,” 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, you know, 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, you know, impostor syndrome that if anyone had said, you’re not very good, I would have been like, correct. I agree. You know, let me stop doing this now. And it really took people like Billie and people like my friend Frank to be like, no, no, no, you’re better than you think you are, to kind of give me the confidence that I needed.

GROSS: OK, so let’s listen to “Ocean Eyes” as recorded by the 13-year-old Billie Eilish and the 17- or 18-…

O’CONNELL: I was 18.

GROSS: …Eighteen-year-old Finneas. So here it is.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “OCEAN EYES”)

EILISH: (Singing) I’ve been watching you for some time, can’t stop staring at those ocean eyes – burning cities and napalm skies, 15 flares inside those ocean eyes, your ocean eyes. No fair – you really know to make me cry when you give me those ocean eyes. I’m scared. I’ve never fallen from quite this high, falling into your ocean eyes, those ocean eyes. I’ve been walking through a world gone blind…

GROSS: That was “Ocean Eyes,” the first song that Billie Eilish and Finneas recorded together, a song written by Finneas, recorded at home, that went viral and really launched their careers. Your mother, when she was home-schooling you, gave you classes on songwriting. Are there insights that she gave you both that stuck with you?

EILISH: Yeah. I mean, honestly, there was one thing that really helped me, which was our mom had us, like, go home and, like, watch something on TV or read something and just write down any interesting words that we see or, like, an interesting sentence and then kind of taking whatever you wrote and just try to make a song out of what you wrote or make a song about the thing that you thought was cool or about this one word, or, you know, at least incorporating this one word into a song you already wrote. Just, like, new ways of kind of taking pressure off of yourself a little – like, that really helped me because songwriting always felt like a lot of pressure on me in myself alone.

And I think that – I don’t know if Finneas would agree, but, like, something that I think has always helped in songwriting is giving yourself permission to write a bad song. I think that sometimes you have this high expectation for yourself, and you’re like, no, no, no, it has to be really good. But you can’t just sit down and make something perfect immediately every time. You have to try and fail. And that was something that was really hard for me. I’m not good at patience, and I’m not good at not being good at something until I am. I want to be really good immediately. And I think it’s just something that helped me a lot – is just allowing myself to not be amazing and just make something to make it and not worry if it’s good.

GROSS: If you’re just joining us, my guests are Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, and their latest album is called “Hit Me Hard And Soft.” We’ll be right back after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILLIE EILISH SONG, “WISH YOU WERE GAY”)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my interview with Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell. They’re brother-and-sister and songwriting and performing partners. And their new album is called “Hit Me Hard And Soft.”

I want to play another song from your new album, “Hit Me Hard And Soft,” and this song is called “Skinny.” And, Billie, it’s talking about how people think you look happy because you’re skinny, you know, that you lost weight. But you write, but I still cry. Did losing weight make a difference in your life? And do you, like, bounce back and forth? – ’cause…

EILISH: Yeah.

GROSS: …That’s something so many people in your audience would relate to.

EILISH: Yeah. You know, I, like everyone and every woman, suffer with a lot of body image issues and just hatred and dysmorphia. And I always have since I was a kid, and I still have that girl in me. And, you know, I’ve had a lot of, as a human does, getting thinner and then getting bigger and then getting fit and then getting not as fit. Like, your body changes over time, especially depending on, like, how you’re living your life.

And a couple years back, when we were making this album, I had been on this, like, really intense kind of health journey, and I had lost a lot of weight. And I’d gotten so strong, and I was, like, thinner than I’d ever been and stronger than I’d ever been. But separately, I was, like, extremely unhappy and unaware of how unhappy I was until I was happy again kind of thing.

GROSS: Were you unhappy cause you weren’t eating enough?

EILISH: No. Honestly, my fitness journey was, like, the thing that I held onto that I was the most proud of. But what was really interesting was I felt really proud of my body and how hard I’d worked. I mean, I was working out, like, two hours, like, five or six days a week and, you know, wasn’t eating gluten and dairy and sugar and past 7 p.m. and, you know – not a fun way to live at all. But it was something that – you know, I’m an addictive person, and that was something that I got very addicted to. And I loved that experience of that…

GROSS: But you were sad.

EILISH: Yeah. I didn’t have much else to hold onto, and I really had that. I had this kind of journey of my strength, kind of. And within that period of time, I would be on tour, and I would come back. And I remember, like, every single person that I would see that I hadn’t seen in many weeks would be like, oh, my God, you look amazing. You look so skinny. Wow. You look so happy. You look so healthy. Wow, Billie, you just look like you’re just glowing. Like, you’re just so happy. And it’s just so nice to see her so happy and…

GROSS: Yeah.

EILISH: She’s just doing so great. And it was really interesting because I got obsessed with that validation. And I loved it. I loved every single thing that everybody said to me. But then I kind of started to think, like, that’s really interesting ’cause I’m not happy at all, but I definitely am skinny. But I also, like…

O’CONNELL: Kind of 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.

EILISH: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, “Skinny” was a song that we wrote out of a really, really, like, uninspired period of time that we had not created anything in and, like, had no ideas for anything. And it was just kind of a depressing period of time. And we were sitting in a studio, and we wanted to write something. I really wanted to write something and couldn’t come up with anything. And Finneas started playing chords, and I started riffing on melodies.

And the lyrics came about because Finneas could see how I was feeling and kind of, you know, starts asking me questions. And I start talking about how I feel and the things I’ve been going through. And he’s just so good at seeing me like nobody else does and, like, I don’t even and being able to put it into words in a way that, you know, I didn’t even realize I was feeling, you know? And, like, he said that lyric – people say I look happy just because I got skinny. But the old me is still me and maybe the real me, and I think she’s pretty. And that was his lyric. And it’s funny that he wrote that because it’s me. It’s how I felt. But it’s just the magic of, like, working with somebody who, A, is such a genius but also knows you like nobody else does.

GROSS: That’s a great relationship to have. Let’s hear the song. This is “Skinny” from Billie Eilish’s new album, which is called “Hit Me Hard And Soft.”

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SKINNY”)

EILISH: (Singing) Fell in love for the first time with a friend. It’s a good sign. Feeling off while I feel fine. Twenty-one took a lifetime. People say I look happy just because I got skinny. But the old me is still me and maybe the real me, and I think she’s pretty. And I still cry, cry, and you know why. Am I acting my age now? Am I already on the way out? When I step off the stage, I’m a bird in a cage. I’m a dog in a dog pound. And you said I was your secret, and you didn’t get to keep it. And the internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny, and somebody’s got to feed it. the internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny, and somebody’s got to feed it.

GROSS: That’s “Skinny,” and my guests are Billie Eilish and Finneas. And their new album is called “Hit Me Hard And Soft.” I think some of your fans think that you’re reading their mind or telling their story.

EILISH: My favorite is, like…

GROSS: No pressure.

EILISH: I know. My favorite is, like, when I put a song out, when we put a song out and, like, people are like, you know, how did she know I was, you know, feeling this? Like, what? Where is she hiding in my room and has been hiding for the last, like, year of my life to write this song that’s exactly my life? I think that’s, like, one of the most magical parts about music. And I’ve had that as a fan, too. And Finneas has, too. Like, you hear a song and you’re like, oh, my God. This is exactly my situation. How could that be? But it’s just that it can be because we’re just all, like, suffering together. And it’s nice to know that you’re not alone in that.

GROSS: Finneas, you have a new album. And I want to play a song from that. So I want to end with “Family Feud” because your family is so important to you both and the way you still operate as a family, because I think your parents are often touring with you, or at least they used to. So this is your song, Finneas. It’s from your new album. Do you want to just say a couple of words about writing it?

O’CONNELL: Sure. We had just finished making Billie’s album, and it was about to come out. And I knew that this, you know, multiyear 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. There’s a lot of attention and judgment paid to us both, and especially to Billie, and it was just sort of a rumination on that.

GROSS: Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell, thank you both so much. I really appreciate you coming on our show. And good luck with the rest of your tour.

EILISH: Thank you so much for having us.

O’CONNELL: Thanks so much, Terry.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “FAMILY FEUD”)

O’CONNELL: (Singing) 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.

GROSS: That’s “Family Feud” from Finneas’ new album “For Cryin’ Out Loud!” Billie Eilish and Finneas’ latest album together is called “Hit Me Hard And Soft.” It’s currently nominated for seven Grammys. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF DUKE ELLINGTON’S “SUGAR RUM CHERRY (DANCE OF THE SUGAR-PLUM FAIRY)”)