FINNEAS may have produced both of Billie Eilish's albums, but when it came to his solo project he didn't want her, or anyone for that matter, to listen to his debut album Optimist until it was totally finished.
“I’d be honored to make some solo music with her at some point,” he told Rolling Stone about working with his sister. “But in this album’s case, I just locked myself in the room and made it alone… I’m a pretty tough audience, and it takes a lot for me to think something is there. So I have that brain of, is this done? Is this not done? Sometimes, especially the beginning of my career, if I sent something to my team, and it was halfway done, sometimes they’d be like, ‘Wow, this sounds great.’ And I’d be like, ‘Oh, maybe I should be done!’ … I think my next album, I’ll probably make more of a collaborative effort, because that’ll be what’s exciting to me now that I’ve made this one alone.”
As for Eilish's music, FINNEAS revealed that they've already begun writing the follow-up to Happier Than Ever.
“We’re really excited to start working on it,” he said.“We’ve got the net in the ocean, and we’re picking up detritus. And then you sift through all that, and you pick out the treasure, and then you have an album. I’m really excited. I think we’ve got a lot to say.”
The siblings embark on Eilish's Happier Than Ever tour in February, and while FINNEAS didn't rule out finishing its successor before hitting the road, he made it clear fans shouldn't expect it to come out before then.“This tour is this album,” he said. “We’ve played some festivals, but we haven’t done Billie headliner solo shows, and we’re really excited to play Happier Than Ever on the road. So even if it’s in the can by February, we’ll [delay it] for a little bit. Because I like letting projects breathe… You don’t want to step on the toes of an album like that. You make your stuff mean less, I think, when you do that.”
Eilish also pulled her first double duty on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, acting as host and musical guest. See highlights from her episode here.