Millions of people flock to Los Angeles to tell their stories. In fact, the city might as well be rooted in the artform of storytelling itself. However, the most intriguing L.A. tales often brew from the minds of her natives.
Just beyond the glow of downtown and even further removed from the glitz and gloss of Hollywood, FINNEAS grew up in one of the city’s many hidden pockets—the kind of place Angelenos know, but you don’t see in movies. He quietly went from cooking up songs out of his childhood home and creative haven to generating hundreds of millions of streams, covering publications such as American Songwriter and Mix Magazine, and concocting a sound steeped in old school pop magnificence, yet underpinned by modern minimalist majesty. The vision becomes abundantly clear on the Deluxe Edition of his breakout Blood Harmony EP and a series of 2020 singles.
However, the story began at home in L.A...
“This is my hometown,” he affirms. “It’s the city that means the most to me in the whole world. I think the longer you live in L.A., the better you understand L.A. I feel like I’ve finally lived here long enough that I’m beginning to understand it as a city. It’s so broad, and there’s an unlimited amount of possibility. Since I got my driver’s license, I’ve been obsessed with the sprawling nature of it. In essence, I make headphone music and car playlist music. I know what music should sound like in either of those two places, and I create with those settings in mind. If my music were a television show or a movie though, it would take place here.”
Mom and dad built an environment for their children’s creativity to flourish. Both parents acted and primarily taught music, while dad also did carpentry. They opted to sleep in the living room, so the kids could each occupy a separate bedroom. Homeschooled, FINNEAS learned a bevy of instruments under his parents’ tutelage, but he taught himself how to produce. The earnings from his first high school job went towards an iMac as he devoted countless hours to teaching himself how to record from tutorials online. He eventually picked up an audio interface and learned Logic Pro X at 13-years-old. At the same time, he spun records by favorite artists such as Ben Folds, The Beatles, The Killers, Sara Bareilles, The Killers, and My Chemical Romance as well as producers a la Rick Rubin, Timbaland, Daniel Lanois, and Brian Eno.
“Learning production is like learning a second language,” he observes. “It helps you articulate yourself better. Once I taught myself the basics, I kept learning as much as I could, and I applied it to what I was doing.”
After logging time in one band after another, he launched his career as a solo artist with “New Girl” in 2016. It paved the way for the likes of 2018’s “Break My Heart Again” [65.4 million Spotify streams], “Claudia” [20.7 million Spotify streams], and “Angel” [16.8 million Spotify streams]. In 2019, he unveiled his proper debut the Blood Harmony EP, which he wrote, produced, and performed by himself. On the buzzing smash “Let’s Fall in Love for the Night,” his delicate croon cruises above plaintive guitar before shuffling over simmering beat towards an acapella break punctuated by fluttering falsetto. It cranked out a staggering 127 million Spotify streams as his impressive dance moves in an angelic white suit atop a downtown roof powered the accompanying music video. Billboard praised Blood Harmony as “pop driven, forward-thinking,” and NME awarded it a score of 4-out-of-5 stars.
Enriching the EP, he leads the Deluxe Edition with a new interpretation of the lead single as “Let’s Fall In Love (1964).” He recorded it live in one take and overdubbed bass, flutes, clarinet, and glockenspiel. On the track, a starry Celesta keyboard twinkles as his dreamy delivery instantly entrances with a timeless plan, “Let’s fall in love for the night and forget in the morning” before a decidedly current colloquialism, “Fuck that noise.”
“I love vocal jazz from the sixties,” he goes on. “I basically recorded the song like somebody might’ve in that era.”
Meanwhile, he follows it up with the standalone single “That’s What They’ll Say About Us.” Sitting behind a piano, he carries the intimate ballad with a message of hope and healing as he assures, “If I say a cliché, it’s because I mean it,” and urges, “Don’t you give up.”
“I was following the story of Nick Cordero who ended up in coma from COVID-19,” he reveals. “I wanted to write a song from his wife Amanda’s perspective. She’s sitting at his bedside with the news in the background covering this completely justified uprising because of systemic racism and police brutality in America. She’s talking to her husband who’s asleep in a hospital at the crossroads of our time. When he died, it hit me really hard. I don’t know either of them, but I was invested in it, so I finished the song after his death. We’re all sitting through this thing; it’s within our power to change the world.
To make the story even better, FINNEAS managed to do all of this while simultaneously emerging as an influential producer and songwriter. He notably made history as “the youngest artist to win the GRAMMY® Award for ‘Producer of the Year, Non Classical’ since Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation Of...” He also built a sterling discography by penning and producing smashes for a cadre of superstars a la his sister Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez, Halsey, Camila Cabello, Tove Lo, Ben Platt, Julia Michaels, and more. His organic, instrumental-driven approach recharged, reimagined, and reinvigorated Top 40 with a nod to the greats and a middle-finger to convention. As a result, he garnered a total of five GRAMMY® Awards, including the aforementioned “Producer of the Year, Non-Classical” and “Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical” in addition to “Record of the Year” and “Song of the Year” for Billie’s “bad guy” and “Album of the Year” for the generation-defining WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP WHERE DO WE GO?
With a lot more to come, it's just the beginning of FINNEAS’s story though...
“When I love a song, I feel seen and understood,” he leaves off. “If a song says something I’ve been trying to put into words, I have an instant connection. If any song I’ve made does that for someone one else, that’s the biggest compliment to me.”