It's safe to say a pretty epic weekend is now behind FINNEAS, after pulling double-duty of sorts at the first installment of Coachella 2022, hitting the stage with his sister, Billie Eilish, during her Main Stage set on Saturday as well as his own solo performance in the Outdoor Theater on Sunday.
LISTEN NOW: FINNEAS chats with Nicole Alvarez
Audacy's Nicole Alvarez got a chance to speak with FINNEAS O'Connell backstage at Coachella 2022 after spending the past few years following closely along with his musical journey; including not only his phenomenal work with sister Billie, but also his solo efforts and passionate views on music as a whole.
Now a multi-GRAMMY and Oscar winning songwriter, and an avowed consumer of all types of music, 24-year-old FINNEAS remembers back to his first live taste of the medium that would eventually define his career. "When I was 11, I saw my first concert ever," he says. "It was Green Day at The Forum, and I had the sort of, cliché, 'a-ha' moment of 'I wanna do that... I wanna be up there playing music." he explains, "I could play a little piano at the time, I didn't know how to play the guitar. I remember going home and being like, 'Now all I need to do is learn the guitar!' But that was so powerful and exciting to me."
FINNEAS realizes though, that he was easily impressed at 11 and wanted to be a magician at one point as well, but his thoughts that it might be replaced by another interest never actually came about. "There just has never been another one of those things," he admits.
"I was very psychologically committed from then on... if I had a time machine I'd tell the younger me to chill out a little. Because I was, and my friend David [a fellow musician and producer] who I'm still very close with, we were both that way. We were both kind of taskmasters in a band in high school," says FINNEAS. Adopting a more serious tone, he says, "We were both like, 'Do you think this is a game?!' We were both so serious, and we were like 15... and it was a game; It was not a career yet! But it was just because we took it so seriously, and we wanted to get better every day, and worked really hard. But I definitely was stressed the whole time."
"My worst fear was doing something else," he adds. "I was like, 'I just wanna make music.'"
Related
Don't miss Nicole's full chat with FINNEAS above to get his thoughts on the festival as well as his plans into next year -- and browse even more of Audacy's backstage interviews and coverage from Coachella 2022.
Listen to your favorite music on Audacy's all-new Billie Eilish Radio, Women Of Alt, Pop Power Ballads, New Wave Mix Tape, '90s and Chill, IndustriALT, and ALT Roots stations -- plus check out our talent-hosted Kevan Kenney's Music Discovery, Megan Holiday's My So Called '90s Playlist, and Scott Lowe on the Go's Post Modern Music Box!
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