Billie Eilish & Finneas

economy to the world, but every story starts with a question.

“And NPR, we stand for your right to be curious, to make sense of the biggest story of”

the day and what it means for you. Follow Consider This, wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air, I'm Terry Gross. Earlier this month, it became a lot easier to see Billy Eilish and Phineas in Concert, while at least in Concert at the movie theater.

Along with filmmaker James Cameron, Eilish produced and directed the new Concert film, hit me hard and soft, the tour. Hit me hard and soft as also the name of their 2024 album, and its release was the occasion for the interview we were about to hear with Eilish and her brother Phineas.

“The song Wild Flower from that album won a Grammy for song of the year.”

Billy Eilish and Phineas O'Connell write songs together. She sings on their albums, he produces and plays several instruments. They began writing and recording together when she was 13 and he was 18. Considering the number of records they've broken in the last few years, they became more than popular, they became a phenomenon.

Their album, when we all fall asleep, where do we go, was the second and Grammy history

to win in the major categories, best record, album, song and new artist all in the same year. Phineas was the youngest person to receive a Grammy for producer of the year, non-classical. Billy 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. Phineas also has an independent career as a producer and recording artist.

Billy spent her teens in front of her fans and the press. In 2019, music critic John Perrellis wrote in the New York Times, "Eilish H17" 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 so undepressive, death haunted, slie, analytical and confrontational, all without raising her voice. Let's start with a song from Hit Me Hard and Soft. This is Lamor Demavi, which is French for The Love of My Life. I told you a lie, I said you, you were the love of my life, the love of my life.

Did a break your heart, did a waste your time, I tried to leave the fear for you. Then you tried to break mine, it isn't asking for a lot for an apology, for making

me feel like it's you, and if I tried to leave, you said you'll never fall in love again

because of me, then you moved on, and made it lead on my own. Billie Eilish, Phineas 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?

Well, we started making music when I was about 13 and as most 13 year olds, I had not grown into my body and my voice and all the things that you age into as a human.

I always, it's funny when things like that happen at a young age, you 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 very big and I wasn't ever going to be able to belt and I wasn't ever going to be able to have much of a chest mix in my voice and I spent many years touring and singing and doing shows and my voice matured and started to change and in the making

I was a kid in my choir and I kind of always 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 ten times better in the last two years and what's amazing is it's just going to keep getting better. Did you want to do a whispering voice? Was that like a style choice or just like

“that's the where you're voice? 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 cords and my breathing you know think about you know how your voice sounded

when you were a kid opposed to now it's a completely different thing yeah and finished I assume you do the arrangements I would say that I do plenty of it but Billy is deeply involved and I would say that as time has gone on Billy 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. I want to play a track because I like the instrumentation the arrangement so much and it's called the diner so finished you want to say a little bit about the instrumental track of this. The diner is a slight anomaly in terms of the way that Billy 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 Billy 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 that 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 bup bup bup that's me playing piano but through a horn sample and then I programmed drum samples and then bass synthesizers over top of that and I presented it to Billy and then she

rift you know these super menacing cool lyrics over top of it so let's hear the diner I'm here I'm waiting on the floor I'm waiting on the floor but please I'm totally close so make this I'm waiting on the floor I'm waiting on the floor I'm waiting on the floor I'm waiting on the floor that was the diner from the new Billy Eyelish album hit me hard and soft and my guests are Billy Eyelish and Phineas. Phineas you're not on all of the current tour that Billy is on and you've just

released a second solo album does that have significant meaning in terms of the nature of your music

partnership. First of all we lived together we both lived at home with our parents when we started making music I was 18 and Billy was 13 and over the ensuing 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 Billy's tour became a more and more heavy lift she started to need to to be more kind of diligent about how much vocal rest and physical rest she was getting on the

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 a kind of a version of like wow this is this is gonna dominate every minute of my life and I feel that I'm really not the you know best pianist guitarist backup singer a company for Billy you know that's not the the thing that is my sort of special skill there my special

skill is being able to write and record songs with her and so if I'm picking between the two

and I have other stuff on my plate I'll I'll pick making the album every time but like can you talk a little bit about when you were a teenager and you had all these like teenage 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 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 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 all so teenagers somehow felt less kind of I don't know I felt I think I just felt so connected to them because we were all the same age and I 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 it I think that something about us all kind of feeling like we were growing

up together was like like honestly comforting to me and also I didn't really have many friends for a couple years and you were homeschooled so it's not like you were hanging out in the school yard or you know in the classrooms with your peers we were homeschooled we didn't go to school but if any of us 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 the dance company and I we did aerial arts and I rode horses and I did gymnastics and I acted and finished 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 and suddenly I had no way of relating to anyone and I kind of lost all my friends and I 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 finished what's it been like for you especially you know early on when Billy 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 Billy yeah I'm four years older

or gender of the predominant audience I had a real sense of gratitude for their enthusiasm and you know the the audience that was coming to the shows the Billy was playing couldn't have been more engaged and enthusiastic Billy ever that some some girls are you know young women in the audience are throwing their bras onto the stage and you perform how often does that happen do you have any idea how that started I mean that's like a classic well it used

to be panties that you know women with throw at male stars you know right well it's funny like I always envied that I remember like watching you know videos of men performing whoever they maybe you know people throwing bras and underwear and you know and I always thought like it's so

awesome so it's so sick 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 would they throw gifts and

“presents and different flags of different kinds and 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 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 know 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 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 on stage but I did see myself in the men that I saw on stage 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 but you know on a related note you often dress you know on videos and in performance on stage and 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 with dressed and like really tight and scanty kind of clothes and the men wearing like baggy hoodies and pants that are so baggy 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?”

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 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 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 guy 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 elephant sterile singing live and Julie London singing live and you know Sarah Vaughn and Nancy Wilson and all these people we were watching these videos and every single one of course because

maybe dresses with her hair done but like they didn't they couldn'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 because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do anything. We're listening to the interview I recorded with Billy Eilish and Phineas in 2024 after the release of their album hit me heart and soft Eilish co-directed a new concert film with James Cameron called hit me heart and soft

the tour. We'll hear more of the interview after a break I'm Terry Gross and this is fresh air. 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 are known go viral but it did and that to be honest with you Terry I also don't understand that. I don't understand. Yeah, yeah good thank you for the validation. So I want to play that song because Billy you were talking

earlier about how when you started recording when you were 13 you were much younger your voice was

“different but Phineas I want to ask you first I think not many teenage boys with thing 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 Billy has to sing this because I know initially you were going to write it for your band.

Well I think you know the three layered answer to that is Billy and I've always gotten along great

really like spending time together I'm sure being homeschooled 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 spent a lot of time together having you know nuanced conversations that's number one in terms of wanting to spend time with our number two 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 I was you know a amateur producer trying my best to record anyone and so you know Billy

is 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 backstories 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 and I had this friend who knew that I was like in a band and he was like hey you produce right his name was Frank he was like you produce right and I kind of

was like I mean not very well it's like you know I was able to see that I was pretty lackluster and he was like 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 gasped me up he just believed that I was more talented than I was and I'd play something 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 Billy too I was making music with Billy 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 ice 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 imposter syndrome that if anyone had said you're not very good I would have been like correct I agree you know let me let me stop doing this now and it really

took people like Billy and people like my friend Frank to be like no no you're better than you think you are to kind of give me the confidence that I needed okay so let's listen to ocean ice as recorded by the 13 year old Billy Ilish and the 17 or 18 18 year old finis so here it is

you're ocean ice oh oh you're not a big big cry when you come with those oceans on scale that was ocean ice the first song that Billy Ilish and finis recorded together a song written by finis recorded at home that went viral and really launched their careers your mother when she was home schooling you gave you classes on song rioting other insights that she gave you both that's stuck with you

“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 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 finis 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 helps 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

if you're just joining us we're listening to my interview with Billy Eilish and Finis recorded in 2024 after the release of their album hit me hard and soft Eilish co-produced and co-directed a new concert film with James Cameron it's called hit me hard and soft the tour more after a break this is fresh air I want to play another song from hit me hard and soft and this song is called skinny and Billy it's talking about how

people think you look happy because you're skinny you know that you lost weight but you right but I still cry um did losing weight make a difference in your life and do you like bounce back and forth because that's something so many people in your audience would relate to um yeah you know I like everyone and everyone suffer with a lot of body image issues and just hatred and this more

of you 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 had 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

“were you unhappy because you weren't eating enough? No honestly my fitness journey was like the”

thing that I held on to 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

I'm an addictive person and that was something that I got very addicted to and I loved that experience you know that yeah I didn't have much else to hold on to 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 Billy 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 yeah yeah she's just doing so great and it was really interesting because I got obsessed with that validation and I 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 because

I'm not happy at all but I definitely am skinny but I 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 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 finish started playing chords and I started riffing on melodies and the lyrics came about because Vinnie's could see how I was feeling and kind of you know starts asking me questions and I start talking about how I feel and 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 aginius but also knows you like nobody else does 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 Harden Soft." 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

I'm ready on the way out when I step off this stage on the part of the cage I'm a darling of my own and the set I was you see and I did it get to keep it and then and then it's how good for them means it's kind of funny and somebody's got to feed it. That's skinny and my guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas and their new album is called "Hit Me Harden Soft."

“I think some of your fans think that you're reading their mind or telling their story.”

My favorite is pressure. 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 feeling 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 Phineas 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.

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 use too.

“So this is your song Phineas is from your new album. Do you want to just say a couple of words about writing it?”

Sure I we had just finished making Billy's album and it was about to come out and I knew that this you know multi year world tour was on the horizon for her and then 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 Billy and just sort of a rumination on on that.

Billy Eilish Phineas McConnell. Thank you both so much. I really appreciate you coming on our show. Thank you so much for having us.

Thanks so much Terry.

“Little late but not alone and you're only twenty two and the world is watching you judging everything you do.”

Just a house and just a home just a handful of balloons just another after me just the way all of us was when it's just the two of us sleep all day. I'll wear me if you were when it's just the two of us.

Billy Eilish and Phineas McConnell Eilish co-directed a concert film with James Cameron called hit me hard and soft the tour.

We spoken twenty twenty four after the release of their album hit me hard and soft. Coming up on this memorial day our book critic Marine Caragan reflects on the books the US government issued to soldiers during World War II. This is fresh air.

“This memorial day our book critic Marine Caragan offers some reflections on the books that were carried into World War II.”

When I was growing up many of the dads in my neighborhood had served in World War II. True to stereotype none of them talked much about the war. Information came sideways. My best friends dad who'd been in the air force in China taught us how to say hot water in Mandarin. Another dad and army vet let slip that he'd burned his uniform upon returning home which puzzled us. And my own dad and navy vet once said something about the funny paperbacks around during the war.

It wasn't until I began researching my book on the Great Gatsby that I realized my father had been one of the millions of servicemen on the receiving end of what's been called the biggest book giveaway in history. When the US entered World War II there was an effort to get books into the hands of servicemen to combat boredom. The books though had to be light and small enough to fit in servicemen's pockets. That was only one of the challenges faced by a group of publishers, librarians and booksellers

who composed the council on books in wartime. The distribution program the council eventually adopted stood in contrast to the Nazi book burnings that began in 1933. The motto of the council on books in wartime was books are weapons in the war of ideas. America would initiate a program for servicemen that would implicitly affirm the freedom to read widely. Colonel Ray Troutman is the hero of this story in a terrific forthcoming book called "A Librarian's War" that'll be available in

September. Molly Guptal Manning details how Troutman came up with the idea of not just distributing books for the troops, but producing them. The armed services editions or ASEs as they were called

the armed services editions began rolling off presses in 1943. By the time the program came to an end

“in 1947, nearly 123 million books were distributed to U.S. troops. The greatest distribution was”

on the eve of D-Day. Every soldier going over an landing craft carried an ASC in his pocket. The most popular of the D-Day titles was Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Just as inspiring to my mind was the fact that the Council's Selection Committee didn't limit its choices to just those books they assumed the troops would like. Sure, there were plenty of cowboy stories, tarzan tales, and suspense fiction.

Forever Amber, a steamy historical romance by Kathleen Windsor, was especially popular.

But among the 1,322 titles produced during the lifetime of the ASEs,

“were Moby Dick, biographies of Frederick Douglass in Queen Victoria, essays by Lincoln and Emerson,”

and poetry collections by Longfellow Keats, and Edna St. Vincent Malay. It must be acknowledged that the ASEs were overwhelmingly written by white authors. It should also be acknowledged that there were efforts to ban some of the books. In a Librarian's War, Manning describes how in advance of the 1944 presidential election, armed services editions that were perceived however indirectly to favor then President Roosevelt

were targeted for purging. In response, newspapers around the country ran at tutorials and letters from readers to crying the bannings. Even the troops themselves got wind of the bannings and protested. Manning quotes one soldier's letter that says, "It will be recalled that Mr. Hitler got his start by banning and burning books with which he, in his wisdom, did not agree. Widespread pushback triumphed, and soldiers freed him to read prevailed.

If you can't wait for a Librarian's war, there are other good books to read about the armed services editions, including Manning's earlier book on the program called "When Books Went to War and a Slim Volume published by the Library of Congress called Books In Action." I found myself at the Library of Congress back in 2012 on the trail of how the Great Gatsby published in 1925 to mixed reviews and disappointing sales came back from relative obscurity so quickly

“after F. Scott Fitzgerald's death in 1940. A crucial part of the answer was the armed services”

editions. Gatsby was published as an ASC in 1945, 155,000 copies were distributed to servicemen that year. The Library of Congress, our national temple of books, has the only complete collection of armed services editions. Anyone can apply for access. Believe me, it's a powerful experience to hold one of these little books and think of the service it performed. Marine Carrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, David Sedaris discusses his new book of essays, The Land and Its People, reflecting on his life as a foreigner, brother, and caretaker of his husband Hugh while Hugh recovered from surgery. He also explains why he still calls you his boyfriend, though they're married,

and why he got his sisters to sign contracts promising they'd never get married.

I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger, our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers, and Rebo Denado, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thia Challener, Susan Yucandy, and Abelman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer

is Molly CV Nesper. Roberta Shawrock directs the show, our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.