He’s written and produced for his sister Billie Eilish, as well as artists like Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato, and Camila Cabello ...
For the release of his debut album, FINNEAS takes Brut behind the scenes of making a hit.
For the release of his debut album, FINNEAS takes Brut behind the scenes of making a hit.
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MusicTranscript
00:00I was playing this chord progression and I said,
00:01I could lie and say I like it like that.
00:04Like it like that.
00:05Like it like that.
00:06Like it like that.
00:07And that line almost sounds like, la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.
00:17You don't have to have the greatest voice.
00:19You don't have to have the most complicated chords.
00:20You don't have to have the most complicated production.
00:22It's just, it's great lyrics and melody.
00:24I mean, think about what gets stuck in your head
00:27that you sing when you're, you know, doing the dishes,
00:31you know, brushing your teeth, taking a shower.
00:34It's just lyrics and melody.
00:35Like we, all of the rest is, you know,
00:38superfluous essentially.
00:54That's kind of the most fun part
00:56about writing for other artists,
00:57is getting to live in their vocabulary.
01:07I generally sort of like find that
01:10rules are important if only to like break them.
01:20The thing that I do the most
01:21is I sit there with a guitar or piano.
01:24I play a chord and I just improvise.
01:27I make up a melody and I make up the lyric at the same time.
01:30And sometimes the lyric is bad or the melody is bad,
01:32but something about it is usually interesting.
01:36Maybe it's a vocal rhythm.
01:38Billy has a song called, When the Party's Over.
01:40And like, that was exactly what that was.
01:42I was playing this chord progression and I said,
01:43I could lie and say I like it like that, like it like that.
01:47And like that line almost sounds like,
01:49la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.
01:51For the James Bond song,
01:53we had the melody first.
01:54James Bond songs have such specific melodic tendencies.
01:59So we came up with this really sort of dark, moody melody.
02:04And then we figured out lyrics.
02:06There are also many instances of, you know,
02:10creating, you know, beats and loops and percussion tracks
02:13and recording, you know, on a professional microphone.
02:17Even the improv, the ad-libbed melodies
02:19at the very beginning
02:21and those making their way into the final product,
02:24that's also super fun and effective.
02:26There's a million different ways to write a song
02:28and have it be equally great.
02:30♪♪♪
02:35I guess to me as a songwriter,
02:37when I'm writing about personal experiences,
02:39it's always my goal to write about them,
02:41not as if they're happening to me,
02:43to write about the thing at hand.
02:44♪ If I could see the future ♪
02:50♪ I never would believe her ♪
02:54I don't want to write songs that are like
02:57super self-pitying or, you know, angry or frustrated.
03:01I want to write songs about like the emotion behind it.
03:04When I'm writing a song
03:05that doesn't come from a personal experience,
03:06I'm trying to imagine that it did.
03:09♪ Sometimes I think about the 90s ♪
03:13♪ I know that everyone romanticized it ♪
03:16Artists that I have co-written the lyrics and melody
03:22with, you know, like Camila Cabello or Tove Lo
03:26or Khalid or, you know, anyone like that.
03:31You know, I think to me it's like
03:33the first couple hours is usually just talking.
03:36To me, the most important thing
03:38is that we have this understanding of each other.
03:39I want to know what's happened to them.
03:41I want to know what they're dealing with.
03:43I want to hear how they talk.
03:44I want to hear their turn of phrase.
03:47If I sat down and sang a melody and sang a lyric or whatever,
03:48like they could sing it.
03:49Maybe they would sing it way better than me.
03:51But if they come up with like the start of something,
03:53maybe they'll start from a place
03:55that I would never think to start from
03:57or a place that's so authentic to them
03:59or the right area of their voice.
04:01You know, I'm like, let's start with the key
04:03you want to sing in.
04:04Let's start with the melody you want to sing in
04:05and I'll help as much as I can.
04:07♪ I think at the root of all of it,
04:13what it's always about is giving songs
04:17this kind of life.
04:17I took a walk by the river
04:19and I didn't know how that was going to sound.
04:21So I brought a little mobile recorder
04:23and recorded the whole thing.
04:24And I'll probably listen to that next week
04:28when I'm in my studio
04:29and I'll either hear some awesome sound
04:32and maybe turn it into a track
04:35or I'll just let the whole five minutes play
04:37underneath the song.
04:38It'll just give the song this kind of life.
04:40The other case is like,
04:43ooh, that's a really good sound.
04:45The sound of that door slamming
04:47or of the lighter getting clicked and turning on.
04:51So that's like a specific kind of like,
04:53let me record that.
04:54Let me put that in the song.
04:55There are such cool sounds
04:57that everybody has at their disposal.
04:59Like sounds from websites like Splice,
05:02sample packs within Logic and Ableton
05:05and anything that you can find yourself
05:07that is unique in any way.
05:10It's really exciting, re-inspires you.
05:12I don't feel as much pressure to create a hit
05:15because I find hits to be really unquantifiable.
05:18Like, especially now that I've had a couple.
05:20When the people around you tell you something's a hit,
05:24it's probably not a hit.
05:25And when none of you can tell,
05:27it has a better chance of being a hit.
05:28Like it's very hard to quantify.