- 4 minutes ago
WIRED turns on dark mode as we hand-pick the very best FINNEAS questions from the internet. How did Billie Eilish’s _Ocean Eyes_ accelerate her into fame? Does FINNEAS get enough credit? What’s FINNEAS’ stance on using AI to produce music? Who is FINNEAS’ dream collab as a producer? This is the WIRED A̶u̶t̶o̶ Complete Interview.Season 2 of Beef is available to stream exclusively on Netflix, beginning April 16.
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00:00Hi, my name is Phineas, and this is the Wired Complete interview.
00:11These are questions from Reddit. Not usually a place I look up myself on.
00:16This is from Yin Yang.
00:19Am I the only one who feels as though Phineas, Billy's brother, does not get enough credit, or they both
00:24should be seen as a duo?
00:25I've seen the comment before, so you're not the only one, but I disagree with you.
00:29I think that I get more credit than almost any producer deserves.
00:33I get so much credit, and it's purposefully not a duo.
00:37I think that what you think of as an artist is more than just the music that is written and
00:45recorded in a studio.
00:46It's the live performances, and it's the visual representation of that artist,
00:52and it's how they move through the world and their fashion, and those are all really entirely Billy.
00:58We sit around together making albums, and then she dreams up these great, you know, album covers and music video
01:06ideas.
01:07And even when I used to play every show with her, she's out there commanding the room.
01:11I'm just trying not to f*** up the bass line.
01:13But yeah, I'm very happy with how it's all panned out.
01:16I'm having such a better life than I thought I would have.
01:19It's really great.
01:24Why'd you trust me?
01:25What genre of music does Billy's Chihiro fit in?
01:29I'm very genre illiterate, so you'd have to tell me what genre Chihiro is in.
01:35What it felt like to me when we made it was it felt synth-y and cinematic,
01:40and I've seen a lot of videos of people running through fields in slow motion on TikTok to that song,
01:47and I'm like, that's exactly what you're supposed to feel like doing when you listen to that song.
01:52Do you remember the how the bass line came back?
01:55To take my love away
01:59Yeah, I played it, but to explain it, I'm a better pianist than I am a bassist by a mile.
02:05You know, to use this guitar as a reference, like, the bass is the first four strings of a guitar.
02:11But if you play a bass line, you're playing these little
02:18And you might play little octaves to pop it on
02:25And you can make it sound pretty fun, but on a piano, those notes are all laid out
02:32Right here, and so I loaded up like a synth bass patch, which sounds very realistic.
02:38It sounds like a person playing bass really well, and then you play it
02:42You know, hopefully in a melodic way, and I played this crazy bass line that kind of meandered through the
02:49whole song
02:50And I felt really good about it, and I thought about re-recording it, but I thought the tone was
02:55so cool
02:56And I'd already recorded Billy's vocals and stuff, and I was like, why am I trying to fix something that
03:00isn't broken?
03:13I have never talked about this in an interview, I don't think
03:16And so why not talk about it?
03:19I grew up the beneficiary of all of this music technology, right?
03:25Like, I always say that Logic Pro, which is what I produce music on, was like $700 or $800
03:30And right when I was saving up to buy it, they made it like $200
03:34And so suddenly I could afford it
03:36And then you go in Logic, and there's built-in synth sounds, and there's loops
03:40And I didn't record a real drummer for like the first six years of my career
03:45Because it's expensive to record real drums
03:48So I think about AI, not through the like, candidly, I've never used it
03:54I've like downloaded the apps to see what's up, and I've been like confused, and I've deleted them
04:01Like that's my current relationship with it
04:03But if I were broke again, and 17 again, I would be figuring them out
04:09And I'd be figuring out how to get something juicy out of them, I think, because it's free
04:14So I don't want to sort of poo-poo a thing that I think is accessible to everybody
04:19And if it inspires you, I think that that's cool
04:24But I think that having ownership over, like I didn't invent
04:32I didn't invent those chords
04:33A million times those chords have been played by a million different people
04:37But I'm playing them right now, here I am playing them
04:42And if I make a mistake
04:45It sounds kind of cool
04:48And I think that if I was relying too heavily on thinking up an idea
04:53By the way, I'm not thinking about what I'm playing, I'm just on the keys
04:57I know the shapes
05:02But I'm not premeditating this
05:05And I think that the premeditation being the key ingredient to AI
05:11I'm dubious about
05:12Because I think that always having to think about what you want to hear
05:17Would not inspire me, to be honest
05:20So if you find a way for it to inspire you, that's awesome
05:23But then do you feel like you made it?
05:29Radix69
05:31How did Billie Eilish's Oceanize accelerate her into popularity and fame?
05:36Well, funny you should ask Reddit
05:38Billie and I loved listening to music on Soundcloud
05:41And we started making music
05:44And then we started uploading it to Soundcloud
05:46And Oceanize was the third thing we uploaded to Billie's Soundcloud account
05:51And then people started texting me the next day that it was on a blog called Hilly Dilly
05:57And at the time it was this very big buzzy music blog
06:01And Chad Hillard wrote this little thing about how much he liked Oceanize
06:05And then that was enough momentum to like draw more attention to Soundcloud
06:09And then other people saw it from that
06:11And then other blogs wrote articles about it and people played it on the radio and stuff
06:14It was amazing and I said to Chad
06:16I finally met him and like took him out to dinner to thank him for like kind of giving us
06:20a career
06:21And I was like, how did you?
06:22I was like, nobody even followed us on Soundcloud
06:24How did you hear Billie's song?
06:26And he was like, somebody posted on a Reddit thread
06:28And I was like, what Reddit thread?
06:30And he was like, he was like, he was like, I'll never reveal my secrets
06:34And I was like, lame
06:37But whatever, that's where Chad heard it was some Reddit thread
06:41So thank you Reddit shitposter for taking a break from whatever strange thing you were posting
06:47To be like, I like this song, it's very cool of you
06:51AnitaRangel is how I'm reading this
06:53Creative folks of Reddit, what's the weirdest or most unexpected place
06:58You've ever had a creative idea hit you
07:02I've woken up with some ideas that have all been terrible
07:06I have some like really embarrassing
07:09Because I wake up and in my dream the idea was fantastic
07:12And so then I wake up and I grab my phone
07:14And I record into it and I go back to sleep and I wake up again
07:17And I'm like, this sucks
07:19Have you heard Paul McCartney's origin of Let It Be?
07:23I haven't heard Let It Be, I know about scrambled eggs
07:25Oh, he dreamed Let It Be
07:27He dreamed Let It Be
07:28He's a better songwriter than me
07:30I heard a really good Paul McCartney story
07:32Which is my excuse to do my Paul McCartney impression
07:35Which is that he, a friend of mine was at a studio in LA
07:40And Paul was like in one of the rooms
07:42And so they're all taking their lunch break
07:44There's Paul McCartney
07:45And somebody was like, can I ask you a question?
07:48He's like, I'm trying to write a song right now
07:50And I'm feeling uninspired
07:51And I feel like I'm not writing the best thing I've ever written
07:54What should I do?
07:56And he said that Paul was like, they're just songs
08:00And I was like, gas
08:02It's so cool
08:05Flimsy Mango
08:06What makes Frank Ocean music so unique?
08:09And what can I learn from it as a producer?
08:12I feel like very few people I've been more inspired by than Frank Ocean
08:17I love his music and I love his voice
08:19So many artists are influenced by Frank Ocean
08:21And I feel like you can tell that they're influenced by Frank Ocean
08:24Because they sound kind of like an imitation of him
08:28And I heard years ago that his favorite artist is Dolly Parton
08:32And that's not who I would have guessed was his favorite artist
08:36But it's such an example of how gifted a songwriter he is
08:40That he's absorbing things from Dolly Parton's music without trying to copy Dolly Parton
08:45But he's taking those ingredients and he's making them his own
08:49I just was like, oh, that's probably one of the reasons that he sounds so unique
08:53Is that he's able to listen to something completely different and make his own thing out of that
08:59This is from characterlog6775
09:03I wonder if that's the gate code to his house or something
09:06What is your favorite song from newest album for crying out loud?
09:11I wrote a song about my sister on that album
09:13It's called Family Feud
09:15And that was important for me to write
09:17Because it was like at this sort of point in our lives where we were no longer touring together all
09:23the time
09:23I was off on my own tours and she was on her tours and it was really about her kind
09:27of going off into the world
09:29Without me and sort of saying good luck and being like you'll probably make you know
09:34You'll do things you regret and make mistakes and that's okay
09:39Um, Dr. Trey
09:43What is the one riff you wish you wrote?
09:46So many great riffs I wish I'd written so many of these great riffs but
09:50Seven nation army comes on at a baseball game
09:54Or you know a grocery store
09:58Equal opportunity riff
10:00Unbelievable riff and also any riff that a crowd especially in a place like england just sings
10:08That's sick. That's really cool singing the instrumental riff and not the vocal part. Very cool
10:17Anxious art ho
10:19What do you think about the pitchfork ratings? How much do you agree?
10:23Pitchfork ratings are funny because
10:27I basically am never thinking about agreeing with them
10:31I am I am
10:33Just looking for the tall poppy. I am just like damn they gave that album a two
10:40That's cold and i'm kind of enjoying how mean the review is
10:44Or i'm like they gave that album a nine. That's ridiculous. That album's fine, but it's not a nine
10:50Um, and then if it's my own album i'm like putting my fingers in my ears and closing my eyes
10:55And I don't want to I don't want to um
10:58Know about it. How about this go look up some of your favorite albums ever on pitchfork
11:04Some crazy scathing reviews of the most important album of your life and you're like damn okay
11:11Well, then never mind because when you love something like that a review is not going to make you
11:17Disavow it and hate your favorite album. Let's see
11:21Uh slash terrible main 33 79 who's your dream collab as a producer
11:28dead or alive very inspired by elliott smith's music as of late
11:32and
11:33I actually think the recording techniques are pretty sick even though they're very minimal. It's like very cool double tracked
11:39vocals and like really
11:41spooky guitar tones and
11:43um
11:44I love the drum tones
11:45So I think that what would be fun about that as a producer would be like just
11:49Setting up those mics around them and experimenting and trying stuff. I don't think i'd have to do a big
11:55lift songs were so cool
11:56Can you give me an example say yes is so amazing first of all i'm obsessed with song titles
12:03Best title for that song say yes
12:06There's so many things in that so that song could be called the morning after
12:09There's so many things that that song could be called and say us is like coolest title
12:13Um, but he has that like bridge thing
12:21Like like does a little spooky thing on the bridge
12:32So cool very impressed this question is from vaso the serb
12:37How is the process of writing tv film music different than writing concert music is film music easier easier and
12:44also
12:44Harder is my answer for it, right?
12:46So what is easier about it is maybe the scene is 45 seconds long
12:52What's hard about it is just making sure that it's matching the emotion of the scene correctly and the timing
12:57Oftentimes if you're working to picture which I did a lot on
13:00The season of beef that I worked on
13:02You gotta play everything to like line up right when the character says the thing or turns to leave the
13:08room
13:08So that could be very challenging too, but they make you better at the other thing. Which is why I
13:12keep doing both
13:15Girl in aura what's an album you consider a 10 out of 10 with no skips?
13:22Honestly the black parade by my chemical romance is a no skips album for me
13:26Yeah, i'll leave it at that. How about this if i'm in the mood for that album?
13:30I'm in the mood for the whole thing. That was all the questions that I was uh
13:34Allowed to answer within the time frame that i'm here and I appreciate wired for their time. Have a good
13:40one
13:43You
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