You might not realize it, but Finneas O’Connell—aka FINNEAS—has written seemingly everything these days.
If you’ve turned on the radio at least once this past summer, chances are you’ve heard “Lunch,” the ubiquitous single off his sister, Billie’s, third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft. Finneas co-wrote it. Or perhaps you saw Barbie and heard the ballad, “What Was I Made For?” the film’s emotional crux? Finneas co-wrote it. Justin Bieber, Tove Lo, Camila Cabello, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Tate McRae, Halsey, Kid Cudi? He’s worked with all of ’em.
Maybe you’ve also heard his solo work—his thoughtful second album For Cryin’ Out Loud! just dropped in October. Or maybe you’re more of a prestige TV person than a pop music type. But Finneas got you there, too, having scored Alfonso Cuarón’s limited series Disclaimer on Apple TV+.
Finneas’ second solo album, For Cryin’ Out Loud!, reflects the songwriter’s collaborative ethos. Finneas gathered a group of close friends to jam together for five days, recording their work in process. Style by Anton Schneider. Grooming by Luca Tullio. Photo assistance by Nick Fish.
Maybe you’re not into pop culture at all. Maybe you’re simply a woman in LA, swiping through dating apps, trying to meet someone special. But you’re not in the clear there, either. That’s right. Finneas might’ve even co-written your Hinge match’s messages to you.
But we’ll get back to that.
The legend of Billie Eilish and FINNEAS—née, Billie and Finneas O’Connell—already feels like ancient pop music lore. The siblings grew up in Highland Park, a now-hip neighborhood in Northeast Los Angeles, to two working actor parents. The kids were homeschooled in order to give them the freedom to exercise their creative inklings—and, oh, exercise they did. Between acting, dance, and The Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, the O’Connell siblings had their hands in seemingly every artform before settling on music.
When Finneas was 11 his dad taught him a few chords on the piano; he took those chords and ran with them. “You learn like, five chords, and you can play 150,000 of your favorite songs,” he says. Specifically, Finneas ran to YouTube, where he learned music production from various church choir directors who were very generous with their time and patience explaining production and song structure to anonymous viewers. By his mid-teens Finneas was penning bops for himself and his band. But some songs, he realized, weren’t a fit for his low register—and much better for his little sister’s confident soprano. In 2017 the pair uploaded a song called “Ocean Eyes” to Soundcloud. It went mega-viral. The rest is history.
Though being a producer and co-writer may not bring him all the glory, Finneas doesn’t seem to mind. He understands the power of crafting material that best suits a performer, film, or scene. Above: Finneas wears Gucci.
Together they’ve crafted a sound nearly synonymous with Gen Z. Billie’s perfectionist soprano paired with her brother’s minimalist, bass-forward production amounts to a diary entry you can dance your ass off to. Seven years after their initial viral success, the pair has 19 Grammys, four Oscars, four Golden Globes, and scores more statues. Finneas is 27, and Billie is 22, two numbers that can make you dizzy if you fixate on them too long.
I’m interviewing Finneas over the course of a photo shoot. Finneas is tall and poised, with a swoop of blonde hair and a well-kempt, reddish-blonde beard. His light blue eyes sit under a defined brow. On his episode of Chicken Shop Date, Finneas mentions people often say he “looks British,” which host Amelia Dimoldenberg attributes to his eyebrows. His speaking voice, though, is distinctly Californian: a light, easygoing conversationalist whose sentences lift slightly at their very ends.
Currently he wears wide-legged white pants and a snug, green collared shirt—very old-school Hollywood vibes, very Cary Grant. He carries himself with ease. He knows his look: eyes relaxed, almost as if daydreaming, with his chin nodded down slightly. Confident but soft. He might be the producer, but don’t be fooled. When the camera crosshairs lock on him, Finneas knows exactly what to do. He’s been doing this since he was a teenager, after all.
“Never let the truth get in the way of a good song.”
While he prefers jeans for red carpet events, Finneas aims for “unique, without being showy.” While his sister is known for her distinct fashion sense—boxy silhouettes, neon hair, ever-evolving experimentation with gender expression—Finneas keeps his look simple. “You know those photos of Hailey and Justin, and it’s like, ‘Where are they both going?’” he says through a laugh. “Billie and I have a similar vibe. Billie looks like David Foster Wallace, and I look like I work for a day trading firm.”
Finneas arrived at the shoot in jeans and a blue T-shirt, as is his preferred day-to-day look these days. “A fair amount of time, years ago, thinking that I had a good sense of style,” he says. “And every day I’m less sure. I look back at stuff I wore that I thought was cool, and I’m horrified.”
This is the case, too, with his music. Two days prior to us meeting, Finneas watched Disclaimer, his first opportunity to see his score in action. “It’s hard not to judge,” he says. “It’s hard not to think, ‘Could I have done a better job?’”
He’s proud of his work, proud of the show, and proud to have been a part of the project. But for Finneas, there’s always something more, something to be perfected. Any time he listens to an older project, he finds himself both pleasantly surprised by some choices and questioning others. “I find it pretty hard to consume anything I’ve done,” he says. “But I also think that if it’s going to make you better, you should.”
Finneas’ speaking voice is distinctly Californian: a light, easygoing conversationalist whose sentences lift slightly at their very ends. Above: FINNEAS wears Zegna.
Finneas’ work on Disclaimer was born out of a friendship. Alfonso Cuarón’s daughter, Bu Cuarón, was an early fan of Billie and Finneas’ music, back in 2017. The Cuaróns would come to Billie’s shows, and Finneas and Alfonso got to chatting. The two even traded playlists—one of Finneas’ included the song “Ponyboy” by SOPHIE, which Alfonso took to. Then, during the pandemic, Alfonso called Finneas and asked him to score a TV show he was working on. At first Finneas hesitated. He felt a bit out of his depth, having never scored anything before, and having little orchestral experience. “I was like, ‘I’ve never scored before,’” Finneas recalls. “And he was like, ‘I’ve never done a TV show before. So let’s do it.’”
So they did it. Finneas flew to set in London in 2022 to get a feel for the show, then spent all of 2023 composing it. By the time he was composing, shooting had wrapped, allowing Finneas to watch cuts of the show while writing. As an actor himself, raised by actors, the songwriter naturally found himself working to serve the story at hand.
“I care a lot about theme, and I care a lot about character,” Finneas says. “The character doesn’t have to be the actor. The character can be like, this environment, this location, this artifact—whatever it is that has an identity sonically.”
But at the end of the day this was still Alfonso’s gig. Finneas and Cuarón worked together “super intimately” on the Disclaimer score. At one point in 2023 the two were having calls every other day. “We’d work on a bunch of pieces, then he’d tell us he hated them, then we’d go and redo them, and then he’d tell me he hated them less,” he says, adding that’s pretty on par with making an album with anybody. But occasionally Alfonso would thumbs-down a song, and Finneas would have to go to bat for it.
He carries himself with ease. He knows his look: eyes relaxed, almost as if daydreaming, with his chin nodded down slightly. Confident but soft. He might be the producer, but don’t be fooled. When the camera crosshairs lock on him, Finneas knows exactly what to do. Above: FINNEAS wears Zegna.
“I try not to battle,” says Finneas, knowing well it’s the director’s project at the end of the day. “But if I love it, it’s my responsibility as the person making music to be like, ‘Dude, I love this!’” In the end Finneas got Alfonso to give in.
As a songwriter and producer Finneas’ sorcery lies in his ability to collaborate. Being the producer and co-writer isn’t one that gets all the glory, but Finneas doesn’t seem to mind that. Rather, he understands his power in having a crucial and necessary skill: He crafts material that best suits the performer, or the film, or the scene. Be it for Billie or Barbie or Alfonso Cuarón, Finneas specializes in writing material that makes others look and sound and feel their best.
Which brings us back to Hinge.
While Finneas has his “look” very much down, in between takes during the photo shoot, he cracks a smile and tells me about last night. Finneas largely works during the day and relaxes in the evenings. He’s not a huge TV watcher—he and his partner, YouTuber and actress Claudia Sulewski, are currently making it through Freaks and Geeks a clip of about one episode per week. Like the true Gen Zer he is, he finds entertainment on his phone. He’s an active member in the group chat, a TikTok consumer, and a follower of YouTube rabbit holes.
Last night he got out of the house. Finneas and his friend were doing what Finneas has been doing for nearly a decade: driving around the San Fernando Valley, looking for this one burger joint, and generally bumming around LA. Finneas’ buddy had just joined a dating app, and the guys were going through his matches, workshopping cute replies to messages. “I was his writers’ room,” Finneas laughs.
Take one woman, who called his friend a “cutie patootie.” After some light workshopping, a little back-and-forth, Finneas landed on this: “We must have friends in common. How do you know what they call me?”
“I find it pretty hard to consume anything I’ve done,” he says. “But I also think that if it’s going to make you better, you should.”
Finneas laughs, knowing well how dorky this exchange sounds. And yet, knowing he crushed it. It’s sweet. Playful. Low stakes, and definitively not creepy. Would he write that as a lyric for a Billie Eilish song? No. An Alfonso Cuarón scene? Nope. A Greta Gerwig character? Well, maybe for Ken. But co-writing is all about serving the subject.
So what happens when Finneas, himself, is the subject? As it turns out, much of the same.
Finneas’ second solo album, For Cryin’ Out Loud!, out this fall, reflects the songwriter’s collaborative ethos. Finneas gathered a group of close friends (themselves musicians and producers) at a recording studio in Frogtown. They jammed together for five days, recording their work in process. Finneas largely found himself directing the jam sessions: “Oh, I like that, I like that, keep playing that, play a little faster.”
“I often find that I might be the most effective version of myself, reacting,” he says. “You know, hearing something and trying to make it a better idea.”
From those days Finneas had enough meat to bring back to his studio to mix, re-record, add vocals to—in all, to turn the jam into discrete songs. Once he ran through that five-day jam, he reassembled his writer-producer Avengers for a few more days, then rinse and repeat, totaling to 14 days jamming with his friends.
While he prefers jeans for red carpet events, Finneas aims for unique without being showy. “You know those photos of Hailey and Justin, and it’s like, ‘Where are they both going?’” he says through a laugh. “Billie and I have a similar vibe. Billie looks like David Foster Wallace, and I look like I work for a day trading firm.” Above: Finneas wears Gucci.
“I haven’t really done that since, like, high school,” he says. He means that literally—some of the folks in that room were friends of Finneas’ as a teenager. “And we were all terrible in high school.”
While collaboration is Finneas’ comfort zone, slapping his name on an album is inherently more vulnerable than playing producer. Much of the album examines his romantic relationship with Claudia; the penultimate track, “Family Feud,” is about Billie. But that doesn’t mean every lyric of Finneas’ should be taken as biblical fact. He ascribes to the following mantra: Never let the truth get in the way of a good song.
Finneas likes to think of accuracy as a starting point. Whether he’s written a love song or written about a fight they worked through, Finneas will sit through a new song with Claudia and editorialize: “That line never happened!” or “This thing is an amalgam!” or “I know that we had that conversation in the winter!”
“I try to be kind of reckless with that,” he says.
On the flip side Finneas has also come to appreciate really vague lyrics. “I think in contemporary lyricism we’ve gotten really specific,” he says. “And that’s fine, but there’s also a time and place for being really broad.” If all movies were mumblecore, he says, they’d drive us crazy. The broad, theatrical, grandiose makes us appreciate realism in film, and vice versa. “I like when you watch a movie and it doesn’t look like real life at all. There’s a time and place for that, there’s a time and place for poetry.”
The resulting album, For Cryin’ Out Loud, is one that sounds like no one but Finneas. If his work with Billie feels like a neon zoot suit, his solo work sounds like jeans and a T-shirt. Both have a time and place, both are necessary to appreciate the other, and both authentically express the artist whose name is on the album cover.
Perhaps such ease and comfort are the result of being on his own turf. At the end of the day he’s living in his hometown. Los Angeles is a very particular kind of hometown—one suited to those trying to make it big in pop music—but it’s his hometown nonetheless. “I just kind of want to be driving around, having a meal, and making jokes.”
Style by Anton Schneider. Grooming by Luca Tullio. Photo assistance by Nick Fish.
A version of this article originally appeared in Sixtysix Issue 13.
