Billie Eilish‘s big brother and super-producer Finneas O’Connell can’t tell you who’ll be the next Billie Eilish. That’s because he says there won’t be one at all.
On a new episode of Apple Music’s Beats 1 alternative music show ‘ALT CTRL,’ host Hanuman Welch asked O’Connell who he thinks will be “the next Billie Eilish.” And the musician told him how he really felt—explaining that he finds the question itself to be creatively troublesome.
“The only version of that question that I can get behind, is, ‘Who is the next person that will do exactly what they want and be deemed pop music?'” O’Connell explained. “That verbiage I would understand, but to me it does a disservice to two things. It does a huge disservice to Billie, in that you could be a next Billie. It also does a huge disservice to anyone they claim Billie is the next version, you know what I mean? It does a huge disservice to Lorde. It does a huge disservice to Lana [Del Rey].”
He continued: “It’s not cyclical in that way. Billie was nominated for Album Of The Year, the same year Lana was. It’s not like you pass the torch and then you just retire.”
In 2020, Eilish and O’Connell took home five Grammys each for their work together.
“I think the whole response to our art being so positive is that it rings true and it feels a unique thing,” he said. “That was the thing that we strive for in the beginning was to not conform to any preconceived notions of what we should be doing. And I think Lorde did the same thing. I think Lana has done the same thing. They’ve both been influences of ours.”
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
O’Connell also tipped his hat to another one-of-a-kind performer, Timothée Chalamet.
“Imagine if somebody was like, ‘Who’s the next Timothée Chalamet?'” O’Connell asked. “It’s like, he’s currently Timothée Chalamet!”
