He doesn’t just pen left-field pop and indie electronica ditties.
After winning Oscars for original songs “No Time to Die” from the same-titled 007 movie, as well as, “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie –both performed by sister Billie Eilish— Finneas O’Connell goes all in on scoring this season. And we’re not talking film, rather the AppleTV+ Alfonso Cuaron series Disclaimer starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen and Lesley Manville.
While we’ve long been acquainted with O’Connell and Eilish’s bass heavy alternative singles, in Disclaimer the former shows a completely different side of himself in what is Bach-inspired chamber piece-driven score for this noirish series about older sophisticated adults whose pasts come to haunt them, and the retribution they seek.
O’Connell’s 180 and deep-dive into classical is reminiscent of David Byrne’s pivots during his career. Not so much when that performer went to do the score to Twyla Tharp’s 1981 dance project The Catherine Wheel; which arguably echoed of the familiar sounds of The Talking Heads. Rather, when Byrne went off to co-compose the sublime, Chinese stringed classical score for Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 multi-Oscar winner The Last Emperor.
On today’s Crew Call, 10x Grammy winner O’Connell tells us about his classical roots, as well as Cuaron’s challenge to him to deliver such a sound. Key to Disclaimer was David Campbell, an orchestral arranger, composer and conductor who worked on Hollywood Bowl string arrangements of Eilish’s album, Happier Than Ever. It was Campbell who turned O’Connell onto the lynchpin of The Disclaimer score: the Attacca Quartet.
In the wake of counting another seven Grammy noms, including Album of the Year (Hit Me Hard And Soft), Song and Record of the Year (“Birds of a Feather”), Eilish is making a stop in Los Angeles on her tour this month, however, O’Connell won’t be in tow on stage which has long been tradition. Instead, look out for him at the Palladium in March.
Below is our conversation with O’Connell:
