ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
After you've performed live at the Olympics and the Oscars, after you've written songs for "Barbie" and "James Bond," is there any place left to go? Well, yes - the Tiny Desk here at NPR headquarters.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
BILLIE EILISH AND FINNEAS O'CONNELL: (Singing) Doing what's right without a reward.
SHAPIRO: Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas stopped by one afternoon to play a few songs for a very lucky, very enthusiastic group of NPR employees. And afterwards, the duo were kind enough to stick around to chat with us.
Hello, you two - so nice to see you.
BILLIE EILISH: Hello. How are you?
SHAPIRO: I'm doing great. And you?
FINNEAS O'CONNELL: I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having us.
SHAPIRO: You came here on a day off from your world tour. Thank you for that. And this is the first tour where the two of you have not been together on all of the dates.
EILISH: That's true.
SHAPIRO: So after this career that has taken off with the two of you being arm in arm, what's it like to no longer be as side by side as you have been and now to be reunited here at the desk?
EILISH: It's been different. It's very different. It's like we've been talking about it for a really long time, and then when it got closer, it was, like, getting real. And it was suddenly, like, really, really, really, bittersweet and really sad. And then what's amazing is Finneas is, like, really, finally, I feel, like, getting to flap his wings and doing his own show. And he's on his own press tour. And, you know, I'm like, oh, God, Finneas is working so hard now. But he's...
SHAPIRO: Do you have to suppress the big brother urge to text and be like, how did it go, after every show?
O'CONNELL: I don't suppress the urge.
EILISH: He does it every time.
SHAPIRO: Really?
O'CONNELL: How was the show tonight?
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
EILISH AND O'CONNELL: (Singing) And all the times I waited for you to want me naked. I made it all look painless. Man, am I the greatest.
SHAPIRO: To me, the sound of siblings singing in harmony is...
O'CONNELL: Blood harmony.
SHAPIRO: ...Different from any other two people singing together. I've never heard that phrase - blood harmony.
EILISH: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: Is that real?
O'CONNELL: I just heard that from a...
EILISH: He has an album called "Blood Harmony."
O'CONNELL: Yeah. Phil Taggart, the BBC DJ, told me the phrase.
SHAPIRO: Oh.
O'CONNELL: And I was like, oh.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
O'CONNELL: What a beautiful way to put that.
SHAPIRO: Can you describe where you go when the two of you are locked in like that?
O'CONNELL: To me, the thing that's synchronous is looking at her mouth moving and making vowels and consonants at the same time. Like, the sort of innateness of blood harmony is that we sound like we're related. So I just worry about singing in perfect time with her - is, like, the main thing.
EILISH: It's actually really sweet. I have two sets of siblings on this tour with me right now, and they all sing together. My openers, who are a couple of my...
SHAPIRO: Right. They're brothers.
EILISH: ...Really close friends are brothers, and they sing together. And it's the same thing. And then my two backup singers are some of my middle school friends and their sisters, and they have that blood harmony, too. And then it's, like, me and Finneas, and it's just, like, blood harmonies all over the place. It's amazing.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
EILISH: (Singing) Couldn't even break it. I shouldn't have to say it. You could have been the greatest.
SHAPIRO: One of the songs that you did in the set "L'amour De Ma Vie" - love of my life - sounds to me very classic. I don't want to say retro, but it sounds timeless.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
EILISH AND O'CONNELL: (Singing) It isn't asking for a lot for an apology, for making me feel I could kill you if I tried to leave.
SHAPIRO: Was there a genre or a voice that you had in mind as you were writing that song? Does it come from an earlier time?
EILISH: It - for sure. It's definitely reminiscent of jazz standards and the kind of world of music that I - Finneas and I really did grow up a lot on and really admire. And I've just always been such a fan of all things, you know, jazz. And, you know, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee and Etta James and Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan and - you know, the list goes on. But, like, those are my singing inspirations and lyric inspirations and melody. I mean, all of those chords and the melodies are just so, like, astounding and unpredictable, and I really look for that in music. And with this song, I really wanted it to feel like the unpredictable kind of melodic turns that those jazz standards kind of give.
SHAPIRO: It's a trick to writing something new that sounds like it's been around forever.
EILISH: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
EILISH: (Singing) Because for you, you, I was the love of your life. But you were not mine.
(APPLAUSE)
EILISH: (Singing) I want you to stay until I'm in the grave.
SHAPIRO: So many of even your sweetest, most earnest love songs have this vein of darkness running through them.
EILISH: Yes.
SHAPIRO: "Birds Of A Feather" is a classic example - rotting in a grave. Why do you think that's the gravitational pull that keeps kind of tugging at your music?
O'CONNELL: To me, it's a little less that the bright songs have darkness in them than it's that everything has something of the opposite. Like, we have really dark songs, bitter songs. Like, I think that the attempt is to not have anything be monochromatic.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
O'CONNELL: If I am watching or reading something and it is just depressing, there - first of all, there's not - I lose my engagement, you know? And maybe it's beautifully written, but I - this feels so devastating. If I read something that's really dark and there are moments of brevity, there are moments where I'm like, oh, that's a funny observation to say, I'm so much more kind of engaged because that's how I process my emotions. The day that I have the worst day, I'm still trying to, you know...
SHAPIRO: Crack a joke.
O'CONNELL: ...Make Billie laugh or something.
EILISH: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
EILISH: (Vocalizing).
(APPLAUSE)
EILISH: Wow. This is nerve-wracking for me.
(LAUGHTER)
EILISH: This is so cool. I've wanted to do this, like, my whole life, so I'm a little shaky. I'm really excited to be here, and you're all so beautiful. So thanks for watching and having me. Let's keep going.
(Singing) It's not true. Tell me I've been lied to.
SHAPIRO: Billie, when you are at the center of this massive touring showbiz machine, what do you do to get back to kind of the intimacy and the core of making music the way you used to in your childhood bedroom in California or you did at the Tiny Desk, where it was so small and quiet?
EILISH: Honestly, like, the Tiny Desk is very similar to how Finneas and I create, and I love that. And I think, you know, what's really been nice is even through the years when everything has grown and gotten big and huge and I'm this, like, you know, famous person and whatever, it's - like, it really - our intimate personal lives have really not shifted and changed.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
EILISH: (Vocalizing).
SHAPIRO: Billie Eilish and Finneas, thank you so much for coming to the Tiny Desk and for...
EILISH: Thanks, Ari.
SHAPIRO: ...Sticking around to chat with us.
O'CONNELL: Thanks for having us.
EILISH: Yeah, thanks.
(SOUNDBITE OF TINY DESK CONCERT)
EILISH: (Vocalizing). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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