Join us on an intimate journey into the creative mind of FINNEAS as he takes us behind the scenes of his and Billie Eilish's hauntingly beautiful song, "What Was I Made For?" In this exclusive behind the song video, we delve deep into the emotional layers of the track and explore the intricate production elements that brought this masterpiece to life.
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00:00 ♪ Taking a drive ♪
00:02 You barely hear it, it's so muffled,
00:04 it's so in the background, but you feel it.
00:07 I'm always trying to hide stuff.
00:09 Hi, I'm Phineas, and I'm gonna take you behind the song,
00:13 What Was I Made For.
00:14 ♪ I don't know how to feel ♪
00:19 ♪ But I wanna try ♪
00:23 This happens occasionally where lyrics and melody and chords
00:27 are all kind of happening at the same time.
00:29 I sat down at the piano, and we just started writing.
00:32 The whole song, minus I think the final verse
00:34 that happens at the very end of the song,
00:36 was written in about 30, 35 minutes.
00:39 We recorded a little voice memo,
00:40 just like sitting at the piano on my iPhone.
00:42 Four or five days later, whenever we reconvened,
00:45 recorded a vocal and a piano at the tempo
00:48 that the final version is in.
00:49 ♪ I don't know how to feel ♪
00:55 ♪ But I wanna try ♪
00:58 I think of creativity as not a task,
01:03 recording a great vocal for three hours
01:06 and comping all the takes together is a task, right?
01:08 If we're sitting and creating something,
01:10 I try not to be rigid at all,
01:12 and then when she's recording vocals,
01:14 she's very rigid of her own sort of volition.
01:16 We try to make it very safe.
01:18 I think that if you feel judged,
01:20 and I'm sure Billie and I both fail at this occasionally,
01:22 but I think if you feel judged,
01:24 you'll be so much less creatively open.
01:27 That's been a huge part of our process,
01:29 and Billie and I laugh at it all the time.
01:30 We'll listen to an old song or a new song,
01:32 and we'll shake our heads and giggle
01:33 at something that might be silly
01:35 or something that might be a little contrived.
01:37 But again, it's just because of the feeling of safety.
01:39 [piano music]
01:42 I record everything on Logic Pro.
01:47 This song is real piano.
01:48 There's a piano in the studio that sounds great.
01:50 Any other instrument, sometimes the actual acoustic one
01:53 is the wrong flavor for the thing.
01:55 But Petroff Piano has a felt pedal.
01:57 It's sort of typically called the practice pedal,
01:58 but it has this incredible muffled feel.
02:01 You engage the felt, and the hammers hit the felt
02:03 instead of just hitting the string directly.
02:06 [piano music]
02:08 So that's the piano on its own.
02:09 What I have selected is piano in stereo,
02:15 and then room in stereo.
02:20 The room is much like sort of more in the background
02:24 of the whole recording, and then the actual mics
02:26 that are right next to the hammers
02:28 are what you're really hearing.
02:30 We just started piano, vocal.
02:32 This was sort of the first base of everything.
02:36 [piano music]
02:38 ♪ I used to float ♪
02:47 ♪ Now I just fall down ♪
02:50 ♪ I used to know ♪
02:53 ♪ But I'm not sure now ♪
02:55 The fantasy is that the song is so great,
02:58 and the vocal is so compelling,
03:00 that you could put out a song with no production
03:02 and no layers, and that it would be just as well received.
03:06 That's like your creative nirvana fantasy
03:08 of just pure minimalism.
03:10 And there are historic, amazing examples of that,
03:13 especially like you go back in time
03:14 to more primitive recordings.
03:15 We don't have the limitations of that time,
03:18 so we're trying to make the thing
03:19 that is the most fun for us to listen to.
03:21 And Billy is like a harmony god.
03:23 We just set about adding doubles.
03:27 ♪ What I was made for ♪
03:29 Those are left and right hard panned
03:32 to create a wider image.
03:35 Some harmonies come in.
03:40 ♪ Made for ♪
03:44 ♪ What was I made for ♪
03:47 We kept 'em really quiet.
03:48 The whole thing to me is like invisibly supporting
03:51 the lead vocal.
03:53 ♪ 'Cause I ♪
03:55 ♪ I ♪
03:57 ♪ I don't know how to feel ♪
04:01 No harmony there, just lead and doubles.
04:04 ♪ But I want you ♪
04:07 Some harmony here.
04:08 ♪ I don't know how to feel ♪
04:15 ♪ But someday I might ♪
04:18 At that point, we're after the first chorus.
04:22 This is probably the point in the song
04:24 where we're not introducing
04:25 new songwriting components anymore.
04:27 This is this crazy toy.
04:29 We ran 'em through a plugin called Sketch Cassette.
04:33 And they're like,
04:34 they sound like a little toy kind of breaking.
04:43 They're kind of following the vocal melodies,
04:45 which is cool.
04:46 They have such a kind of a,
04:50 they sound a little crazy like this,
04:52 but it's so melancholy to me, which I love.
04:57 A bunch of Mellotron comes in.
04:59 Mellotrons have just like the prettiest on board stuff.
05:04 It's really crazy.
05:06 Sounds so vintage and warm.
05:13 A little vibraphone, fake cello, fake strings.
05:18 This is a
05:22 Kontakt plugin.
05:25 I think that it's all kind of about
05:34 like the sort of physics of it.
05:36 Once the production became lusher,
05:38 there was room for the vocals to become lusher.
05:41 And after we started adding more instrumentation,
05:44 went back to the first half of the song,
05:47 added some electric bass guitar,
05:50 just to support the kind of chordal structure of it.
05:53 And we started automating in a bunch of ad libs.
05:56 I did a bunch of automating of delay and reverb.
05:58 We did these kind of throws where they swell in.
06:01 They just kind of pop out under certain words.
06:05 And then all these beautiful ad libs too.
06:08 ♪ Looks so good ♪
06:11 ♪ Turned out like you said ♪
06:14 Which are buried way in the background,
06:16 but they just add a little more life.
06:18 ♪ I don't know how to feel ♪
06:23 ♪ But I wanna try ♪
06:28 You got these kind of things supporting the melody
06:32 and also getting out of the way.
06:33 And it's just sort of feels like a choir of people singing,
06:36 even though it's all Billy's voice.
06:38 Mark Ronson sent about four tracks.
06:41 So delicate, so soft.
06:48 Like an orchestra stem, some harp.
06:53 Beautiful, love it.
06:54 And in keeping, pretty much kept it all out
06:56 until nothing playing and then verse two,
06:59 just to start bringing stuff in.
07:05 Some like cello comes in first, it's great.
07:08 Matt Dunkley did the string arrangement for this
07:16 and the James Bond song.
07:18 There's some really subtle percussion
07:20 that just happens on impact notes.
07:22 ♪ Taking a drive ♪
07:25 You barely hear it, it's so muffled,
07:27 it's so in the background, but you feel it.
07:29 I'm always trying to hide stuff.
07:32 I'm trying to hide stuff
07:33 because I'm a terrible visual artist,
07:35 but when you see a great painting
07:38 and it's 190 different shades
07:40 and it doesn't look like 190 shades,
07:42 it looks like a sunset.
07:44 And that to me is the approach with all music productions.
07:47 Like if you're thinking about it, I have failed.
07:50 But if you're just absorbing it, then it's a success.
07:53 This is a organ run through an arpeggiator plugin.
08:00 So I'm playing all of the notes
08:01 and it's just cycling through them.
08:03 (orchestral music)
08:06 ♪ I ♪
08:10 ♪ I don't know how to feel ♪
08:15 ♪ But I wanna try ♪
08:20 ♪ I don't know how to feel ♪
08:27 ♪ But someday I might ♪
08:31 ♪ I might ♪
08:33 I don't think about what people
08:35 are gonna take away from music.
08:36 I just think about what I do.
08:37 If I'm in a car or listening to headphones
08:40 or just in my house listening to a speaker
08:43 and I hear a song and I resonate with it
08:46 on some like subatomic level of like,
08:49 oh man, I feel this song in my chest,
08:51 whether it's just a beautiful melody
08:52 or it's a profound lyric,
08:54 I'm trying to recreate that feeling
08:56 that I get listening to great music in what I make.
08:59 I know that when we made the song,
09:01 Billie played it ad nauseum.
09:03 It was like a therapy session for her.
09:04 She felt like she had totally expressed
09:06 what she needed to say.
09:08 If fans take away that,
09:09 that would be like the biggest victory.
09:11 But to me, it's like if the audience
09:13 took some profundity away from something
09:16 and I felt nothing, I'd rather the opposite be true.
09:19 I'd rather make music that I love.
09:21 Seeing the response was incredibly gratifying.
09:24 It was awesome.
09:25 (orchestral music)
09:28 (audience applauding)
09:31 I think the goal was that it was reflective
09:34 of the experience of this character,
09:36 but there's also this much broader reflection
09:38 of just like who am I,
09:39 and especially with Billie as an artist
09:41 and as a young person who's already been
09:43 in the public eye for a long time.
09:45 No one I think probably feels more figured out
09:48 by the rest of the world than anyone in the public eye.
09:50 People are like very quick to be like,
09:52 I know who that person is,
09:53 I think these things about them
09:54 and I think they're this way.
09:55 You know with your friendships and your relationships
09:58 with anyone in life that you're subject to change
10:01 and the you of today is different
10:03 than the you of six months ago
10:04 and the whole joy of life is changing.
10:06 (orchestral music)
10:09 (orchestral music)
10:12 (music fades)
10:15 [Music]