MANILA, Philippines — The Oscar-winning tandem of Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell is behind the music of the coolest (fictional) boy band 4*Town in Disney and Pixar’s coming-of-age tale Turning Red.
They wrote three songs, including Nobody Like U, which shot to No. 1 on the Spotify Global Viral Songs chart. The 4*Town song also debuted at No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100. Not bad for an imaginary boy band!
This early, some pundits are saying that Billie Eilish and Finneas could possibly win another Oscar after taking home the Academy Award for Best Original Song last week for No Time To Die, the title tune of the latest James Bond film.
If you haven’t seen Turning Red yet, which is still showing in Philippine cinemas, the story is about a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl who turns into a giant red panda whenever she gets super emotional. Set in the early-2000s era of flip mobile phones, CDs and boy bands, the animated film is so relatable, thanks also to the boy band craze that’s very much alive and well today.
4*Town is the group that Mei, the film’s teenage heroine, and her friends are obsessed with. The movie reminds how at one point in our youth, there is that one pop group that provides the soundtrack of our lives, even shapes our character or makes us do the craziest things. In the case of Mei and her besties, the 4*Town becomes the reason behind their adventures — or rather, misadventures — in the film.
Director Domee Shi said in the press notes, “They (4*Town members) represent that one band — that one song we all heard at her age that transformed us. They’re Mei’s first crush, her first obsession. This passion for 4*Town is really her first dip into adolescence.”
Making 4*Town the “coolest fictional boy band of all time” was quite a story in itself.
During a roundtable interview with Asian media, The STAR asked producer Lindsey Collins the story behind how Eilish and Finneas got onboard the project.
Collins said, “We were going to have this boy band and once that became kind of a solid part of the script, we talked about, you know, whether we should go to an existing boy band and see if they would be willing to write some songs for us, but then, we were too enamored with the concept of creating our own boy band.”
“And, you know, at the time, my kids were tweens and teens, and Billie Eilish was being played constantly in our house and it was so clear to me that she was speaking to them. She had an ability to kind of really talk to this generation in the same way that I think we all had those kinds of musicians, boy bands or whatever in our teen years that we felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, they’re talking to me,’ and we wanted to really tap into that. That’s the beauty of music or of art or whatever of that generation, it’s when you feel like those songs were written for me,” Collins added.
In hopes of convincing sibling writing tandem to compose songs for 4*Town, the filmmakers made their proposal through a scrapbook.
Collins recalled to The STAR: “And so we kind of sent them a scrapbook, a fake scrapbook they (the characters) would have made, and kind of said, ‘Would you guys be willing to not sing a song for us, but rather write a boy band song circa 2002? And then how about three?
“And we were like, they’re never going to probably take the meeting but they took the meeting and we pitched them a bunch of stuff from the movie, and they were like, ‘Yeah, we’re in.’ So after that, they just kind of turned around really quick demos of the songs that we’d asked them to do. We were instantly like, oh my gosh. We played a couple for the crew and they’d be, ‘I feel like I know this song, like I feel I can already start to sing along to it.’ So, it just felt such a kind of gift to get them involved.”
The filmmakers particularly requested compositions that would each fulfill a different purpose and embrace the style of some of the most iconic boy band songs. Said Shi: “The first one is the hit that everybody knows. Then there’s the earnest, heart-on-your-sleeve power ballad. The third is the party show-stopper — the fun, energetic song. We knew if we had those three songs, we could use them throughout the movie.”
Talking more about their songwriting process in the press notes, the brother-sister team said they had to channel an era that emerged before they could even talk.
“We had to write songs that would be popular in 2000, which at the time, I was one year old,” said Eilish, who made history as the youngest artist to win in all the major categories at the 2020 Grammy Awards, receiving awards for Best New Artist, Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album. “But boy bands have a very specific sound, and it’s music I grew up listening to and loved. It was really, really fun to just play around in that world and write in the mind of a corny boy.”
On Nobody Like U, Finneas said, “It’s that song that feels like you’ve heard it a million times already — boy bands are so good at doing that. It was such a fun challenge to write a song like that. I love playing with all of the double negatives —‘I’ve never met nobody like you, you’re never not on my mind, you’re never not by my side.’”
Eilish added, “The lyrics aren’t always good grammar. And they can be hilariously corny — ‘I’ve had friends and I’ve had buddies, it’s true. But they don’t turn my tummy the way you do.’ But they’re being honest — they’re trying to say something sweet, profound.”
1 True Love, the second song, is the type of number performed to give boy band members time to sit on chairs and take a break from choreography. Eilish said, “I really enjoyed making this one because we just sat down at the piano and got in the mind of this person who’s heartbroken. It’s raining, very melodramatic. ‘Heavy rain on a Saturday when you said my name in the saddest way. Nothing numbs the pain. You’re still the light of my life.’ I just love how dramatic it is. If I heard that song from somebody I was infatuated with when I was 13, I’d be, ‘Oh my God! He’s talking to me!’”
The third 4*Town song is the “motivational” U Know What’s Up, which has a sing-along style. Said Eilish, “We wanted to make these fans feel confident and independent: ‘I’m gonna make it all the way — just watch me. I’m gonna hustle every day. Making paper like it’s origami. I only came to win the game. Can’t stop me.’”
As for the animation aspect, because this band creates the most important music of Mei and her friends’ generation, Shi made sure that they were able to present the teen idols they needed to be. The animation team followed Shi’s guidance when it came time to choreograph 4*Town — that they were not making fun of boy bands but celebrating them.
And so serious was Disney and Pixar in making this fictional boy band feel and sound real that they have their own interactive website with detailed descriptions of the members and directions on how to become part of the fandom a.k.a. 4Townies.
Based on the film, the fictional boy band holds epic concerts with high-flying theatrics, lights and pyrotechnics. And most important of all, they have five dreamy, scream-inducing members — Robaire, Jesse, Aaron T., Tae Young and Aaron Z., who are voiced by Jordan Fisher, Finneas O’Connell, Topher Ngo, Grayson Villanueva and Josh Levi, respectively.
According to his bio, Grayson is a Filipino-American SAG-AFTRA performer, award-winning vocal arranger and music producer based in Los Angeles. He has over a decade of professional experience as a singer and beatboxer. He is also touring vocalist for acapella groups like The House Jacks, The Filharmonic, Vocal Flash and HIVE, and has worked with the likes of such artists as Janelle Monáe and Keala Settle. As a “staunch advocate for Asian representation in the media,” it was “just surreal to see,” he said in an interview when asked about the first time he saw 4*Town in animated action with his voice in it.
(Check out Turning Red screening schedules at movies.disney.ph.)