Finneas O’Connell is having a life-changing week. At just 21 years old, O’Connell has enjoyed promising success as an actor, performer, and producer in the last five years. You might recognize him as the leader of the Los Angeles rock band the Slightlys, or from his role as Alistair in the final season of Ryan Murphy’s beloved high-school art-kid drama, Glee. He’s now slipped into a less-visible role, but his most crucial one yet, as the sole producer of his younger sister Billie Eilish’s captivating debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. Show This week, the album O’Connell helped assemble in bedrooms and hotel rooms last year debuted on top of album charts in the U.S., as well as in multiple countries across the globe. At home, Asleep’s 307,000 equivalent unit first-week harvest is the second-largest sales week of the year, landing just 40,000-some-odd units behind the first-week total for Ariana Grande’s meteoric Thank U, Next. Asleep is the first No. 1 album by an artist born in the 21st century. At 17, Eilish is the youngest Billboard 200 chart topper since Shawn Mendes pulled a similar feat at 16 on 2015’s Handwritten. The success of Asleep might feel like a UFO landing to listeners still new to the sturdy body of work Eilish and O’Connell have pieced together since 2016’s wispy, forlorn “Ocean Eyes,” but the brother and sister’s journey has been a path of self-discovery and creative refinement. Asleep is smarter than your average modern post-genre pop album and stranger than our biggest mainstream singer-songwriter works. The dance tracks are quiet to the point of claustrophobia, and the pop gestures are unusual and almost ironic. “Xanny” tiptoes quietly over pilled-out partygoers wondering what makes them tick. “Wish U Were Gay” plays a story of a doomed crush like a radio jingle. “When the Party’s Over” reimagines a breakup song as a church hymn. When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? is making an impact because it feels new and unpredictable, and also because the singer, producer, and players have spent the last few years honing their chops to a fine point. On Monday, I rang O’Connell up as he relaxed in Highland Park, Los Angeles, where he and Eilish were raised, to talk about the making of an international hit album. O’Connell is an affable polymath with a keen sense of humor and an infectious love of his craft. “!!!!!!!”I didn’t get the Invisalign intro at first, but lately, I think of it as kind of like the seat-belt warning light before a car ride. Does that make sense? So we had a sound bite of her taking it out, and we just kind of were joking around about it. When we were wrapping it up, I felt like the album was pretty dark and covered a lot of heavy stuff, with songs like “Bury a Friend” and “Listen” and “Ilomilo.” It was kind of a grim reflection of the time that we’re growing up in. The art that I like that is the darkest … if there’s an element of humor in it, I think I take it even more seriously. It really resonates with me. It was really important with this album to find a sense of humor in the midst of all of this heaviness. So that was kind of the goal with the intro. “Bad Guy”This song’s got a cool New York synth-punk feel I wouldn’t have guessed I’d hear on an album like this. Who do you guys look up to musically that people wouldn’t expect? “Xanny”I like how the sound tells a story as much as the lyrics do. It feels like this song is happening in the middle of a party. I got the sense that the instruments on this one were being played a hair out of time, to get that woozy, drunk feeling. He had very specific and intentional timing, yeah. That’s what it is! Absolutely. “You Should See Me in a Crown”Music nerds are always looking for the autobiographical story behind the song, but I feel like a lot of the songs that you guys are writing are coming from somewhere else. How often does a song come out of someone just obsessing over a concept or fixating on an odd turn of phrase that you heard somewhere? So sometimes the story of the song is just, “I hear these words and now I have to write a beautiful song around them?” “All the Good Girls Go to Hell”I’m hung up on this chorus. It’s a really interesting line, the idea that good and evil deities would have this quiet respect for each other. It’s not one you hear a lot in Western theology. I wonder how your fans are handling the heavier themes in the music. If there were a God and a Devil, if you believe that there are, the idea that humans have made such a mess of the planet at this point that they’re both talking to each other like, “What’s going on? Why did they do all of this?” That was an appealing concept. “Big hills burn in California.” We grew up here, and one thing about California as a state is that we don’t really have extreme weather in general. There are hurricanes and floods and shit, and we sometimes have earthquakes, but a lot of the time, the natural disasters are not in our backyard. In the last two years, there have been these horrendous wildfires. When we all fall asleep Where Do We Go songs meaning?For one, we all know the dreadful feeling of unrequited love, and it's a feeling I know all too well. In the song, Billie says how she doesn't want to believe that there's anything wrong with her – other than that she's the wrong sexual orientation for the guy she loves.
When we all fall asleep Where Do We Go lyrics sales?debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 albums chart with 313,000 album-equivalent units consumed, of which 170,000 were pure album sales.
When we fall asleep where do we go answer?So, where DO we go when we fall asleep? Straight answer – nowhere, unless sleep-walking is a normal thing for you, and you define conversational depth by the flights of stairs that you tumble down while doing the sleep-walk! Seriously, it is an interesting question, one with limitless responses.
When we all fall asleep Where Do We Go inspiration?A number of the tracks from Eilish's WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? were inspired by XXXTENTACION. Post Malone and Bon Iver also show up more than once.
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