Fresh Air - Billie Eilish & Finneas

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

The Grammy Award-winning singer says working with a vocal coach "honestly changed my life." Eilish and her brother/collaborator Finneas talk with Terry Gross about their new album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, voice lessons, and their favorite homework assignment. Also, critic-at-large John Powers shares his highlights of the year — from a documentary to an Olympic moment.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Ho ho ho! Santa here, coming to you from the North Pole. We're the elves in our podcast division of just completed work on this season's best gift for public radio lovers, NPR+. Give the gift of sponsored free listening and even bonus episodes from your favorite NPR podcasts, all while supporting public media. Learn more at plus.npr.org. Ho ho ho! This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guests are Billy Eilish and Phineas O'Connell.

As you probably know, they're siblings who write songs together. She sings on their albums. He produces and plays several instruments. They've been writing and recording together since she was 13 and he was 18. Considering the number of records they've broken in the last few years, they're more than popular. They're a phenomenon. Their album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go, was the second in Grammy history to win in the major categories Best Record, Album, Song, and New Artist all in the same year. Phineas was the youngest person to receive a Grammy for Producer of the Year, non-classical. Billie was the youngest to win two Oscars, one for the theme for the Bond film No Time to Die and another for What Was I Made For from the Barbie Movie. She

collaborated on both songs with Phineas. They're continuing to break records. Billie was the youngest most listened to artist on Spotify this year. Their latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, is now nominated for seven Grammys, including all the major categories. Each of its tracks reached over 150 million streams on Spotify. Vinius also has an independent career as a producer and recording artist. His second solo album was recently released, called For Cryin' Out Loud. Billie spent her teen years in front of her fans and the press. In 2019, music critic John Pirellis wrote in the New York Times,

Eilish, age 17, has spent the last few years establishing herself as the negation of what a female teen pop star used to be. She doesn't play innocent or ingratiating or flirtatious or perky or cute. Instead, she's sullen, depressive, death-haunted, sly, analytical and confrontational, all without raising her voice. Let's start with a song from Hit Me Hard and Soft. This is L'amour de ma vie, which is French for the love of my life. I told you a lie I said you You were the love of my life

The love of my life Did I break your heart? Did I waste your time? I tried to be there for you Then you tried to break mine It isn't asking for a lot for an apology For making me feel I could kill you if I tried to leave You said you'd never fall in love again because of me then you moved on immediately Billy Eilish, Phineas O'Connell, welcome to Fresh Air. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Billy, it strikes me you're singing more in a fuller voice.

What's changing about your voice and how you choose to use it? a fuller voice. What's changing about your voice and how you choose to use it? Well, you know, we started making music when I was about 13. And as most 13 year olds, I had not, you know, grown into my body and my voice and all the things that you age into as a human. And I always, you know, it's funny, like when, when things like that happen at a young age, you kind of have this idea that that's how things are going to be forever. And so in my mind at the time, my voice was going to sound like it did then forever. I thought it was going to be soft and my range wasn't going to be very big and I wasn't ever going to be able to belt and I wasn't ever going to be able to belt and I wasn't ever going to be able to

you know have much of a chest mix in my voice and you know I spent many years touring and singing and doing shows and my voice matured and started to change and in the making of Hit Me Hard and Soft I started working with a singing teacher, which I hadn't done since I was a kid in my choir, and I kind of always like felt hesitant to and kind of embarrassed to somehow. And it completely has just honestly changed my life. And I mean, I've just my voice has just gotten, you know, 10 times better in the last two years. And what's amazing is it's just going to keep getting better. Did you want to do a whispery voice? Was that like a style choice or just like, that's the way your voice? No, that's just how I sang. That's what's funny about it. I just, you know, I was like, I couldn't really do much else. Like I didn't have the range,

I didn't have the strength in my vocal cords and my breathing, you know? And think about how your voice sounded when you were a kid opposed to now. It's a completely different thing. Yeah. And Phineas, I assume you do the arrangements. Yeah, like the production and the instrumental arrangement. I would say that I do plenty of it, but Billie is deeply involved. And I would say that as time has gone on,

Billie has become kind of more knowledgeable and articulate about what she likes and what she doesn't in instrumental arrangement and production and vocal arrangement. So we're either brainstorming stuff together or at the very least she's reacting to what I do in a kind of a I like that go further I don't I'm not crazy about that, you know take that out kind of a sense if that makes sense

I want to play a track because I like the instrumentation the arrangement so much And it's called the diner So Phineas do you want to say a little bit about the instrumental track of this? The Diner is a slight anomaly in terms of the way that Billy and I most commonly work. I would say the way that we most commonly work is I sit down with a guitar or I sit down at a piano and I play chords and Billy sings melodies and we come up with lyrics and melodies together over top of chords. In the case of The Diner, on my own I had made what became sort of most of the instrumental of The Diner.

I'd been sitting around one day playing that sort of sampled, re-articulated horn thing. You take kind of a one track of a horn being played and then you load it onto a keyboard and the horn is then chromatic on the keyboard and you play the bup bup bup bup bup bup bup bup. That's me playing piano but through a horn sample. And then I programmed drum samples and then bass samples, or I guess not bass samples, but bass synthesizers over top of that, and I presented it to Billie, and then she riffed these super menacing,

cool lyrics over top of it. So let's hear the diner. ["Diner"] Don't be afraid of me I'm what you need I saw you on the screen I know I meant to be You're starin' in my dreams A magazine you're still looking red at me I'm here in the club I'm waiting on your call

But please I'm told the cops They'll make me stop And I just wanna talk If I could change your life You could be my wife Cooking into a fire I'll say you're right And you can sleep goodnight I waited on the corner till I saw the city Was easy getting over and I landed on my feet I came in through the kitchen looking for something to eat.

I left a calling card so there was no one to open it. That was The Diner from the new Billie Eilish album, Hit Me Hard and Soft. And my guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas. Phineas, you're not on all of the current tour that Billie is on, and you've just released your second solo album. Does that have significant meaning in terms of the nature of your music partnership?

Well, I think if I go back to the kind of genesis of this, first of all, we lived together. We both lived at home with our parents when we started making music. I was 18 and Billy was 13. And over the ensuing, you know, years, even after I moved out into my own place as a 21-year-old, we still made most of the music in the bedroom in my childhood home. And as time went on and Billy's tour became a more and more heavy lift, she started to need to be more kind of diligent about how much vocal rest and physical rest she was

getting on the road, which meant that we were making less music on the road. And the sort of turn of the tide there was that we would come off the road and had made nothing new and then we'd kind of have a detox at home where we would have just spent every day together for several months and we'd kind of chill out and then we'd sort of reconvene and start making new music and then we'd go back out on the road. So it just became a kind of a version of like, wow, this is gonna dominate every minute of my life. And I feel that I'm really not the, you know, best pianist, guitarist, backup singer,

accompanist for Billie, you know. That's not the thing that is my sort of special skill there. My special skill is being able to write and record songs with her. And so if I'm picking between the two and I have other stuff on my plate, I'll pick making the album every time. Bella, can you talk a little bit about when you were a teenager and you had all these like teenage teenagers, especially teenage girls, as like such dedicated fans. What was it like for you to grow up as a teenage star with so many teenage listeners? Kind of

idolizing you. And then judging from what I've seen and read about you, you've been kind of insecure about yourself, not necessarily of your music, but you know, for any insecurity you have, to have all these people turning you into an idol must have been, well, even though it was a lot for a young brain and body to deal with, in a way, the fact that I was a teenager and they were also teenagers somehow felt less kind of, I don't know, I think I just felt so connected to them because we were all the same age.

And I think it can be really hard when you're an adult and you have fans that are children to you or way older than you. I think that something about us all kind of feeling like we were growing up together was like, like, honestly comforting to me. And also, I didn't really have many friends for a couple of years. And Well, you were homeschooled, so it's not like you were hanging out in the schoolyard or

you know, in the classrooms with your peers. Well, so this is what's interesting is we were homeschooled, we didn't go to school, but Phineas and I both had so many friends growing up and we did so many things and there was no shortage of friends, there was no shortage of activities and you know things to do which I think can be surprising for people to hear because they kind of think like well then how did you meet them and you know we had all sorts of things we did. I was part of a choir and I was in a dance company and I we did aerial arts and I rode horses and I did gymnastics and I acted and Phineas acted

and I was in a, you know, there were so many things that were social for us. And honestly, when I became famous-ish at 14, it was not a good time in terms of like keeping friendships. I think when you're 14, that's kind of an age where friendships are already kind of rocky. And also all my friends did go to school. So like they were all going to high school and suddenly I had no way of relating to anyone. And I kind of lost all my friends

and I maintained a couple, but those were really challenging to keep even still and So for those few years of becoming this like enormous superstar I was kind of feeling like wait, what the hell is the point? I don't have any friends and I don't have like, like I'm losing all the things that I love so deeply and all the people that I love. And so in a way, the fans kind of saved me in that way because they were my age and I felt like they were the only kind of friends I had for a while.

Finnis, what's it been like for you, especially early on when Billy was very young and you were still in your teens, your late teens, what was it like for you to have an audience dominated by teenage girls when you're a guy and you're also older, you're four or five years older than Billy? Yeah, I'm four years older. So I would say that I didn't have much of a kind of a feeling one way or the other about the age or gender of the predominant audience. I had a real sense of gratitude for their enthusiasm.

And the audience that was coming to the shows that Billy was playing couldn't have been more engaged and enthusiastic. Billy, I've read that some girls or, you know, young women in the audience are throwing their bras onto the stage when you perform. How often does that happen? Do you have any idea how that started?

I mean, that's like a classic. Well, it used to be panties that, you know, How often does that happen? Do you have any idea how that started? I mean, that's like a classic. Well, it used to be panties that, you know, women would throw at male stars, you know. Right. Well, it's funny, like, I always envied that. I remember, like, watching, you know, videos of men performing, whoever they may be, and, you know, people throwing bras and underwear, and underwear and you know and I always thought like that's so awesome so it's so sick so powerful I always was just jealous of that and I remember when I was first doing shows you know fans throw all sorts of things on stage they throw gifts and presents and different flags of different kinds and

And honestly like right away people started throwing bras when we were all me and the audience 16 and I loved it. I really did. You know, I had I spent many years having a lot of Not not gender dysphoria about my own gender but I think a lot of women go through the feeling of you know just envying men in any kind of way one way or the other and for me I would watch videos of different male performers on stage and just feel this like deep sadness in my body that I'll never be able to, you know,

take my shirt off on stage and run around and like not try very hard and like, you know, just jump around on stage and that's enough and you know, have enough energy from just myself with no backup dancers and no You know huge stage production and the crowd will still love me And that's just like only a man can do that and because of that I think more than almost anything else in my career I was very very very determined to kind of prove that

thought wrong and I Really did I really did. I really feel like I did. I didn't like the kind of pop girl, leotard, you know, backup dancers, hair done thing. I didn't like that for me.

I liked it for other people, but that didn't resonate with me. I never saw myself in those people. And honestly, I never saw myself in any women that I saw on stage, but I did see myself in the men that I saw on stage. And I thought that was unfair. And so I did everything that I could to kind of try to break that within myself and the industry. But you know, on a related note, you often dress, you know, on videos and in performance on stage in really baggy clothes.

And I was thinking, like, since you grew up with a lot of hip hop, you know, in a lot of hip hop performances on stage and in videos, the dancers or the women in the videos are usually dressed, and especially earlier in the period when you were growing up, were dressed in, like, really tight and scanty kind of clothes and the men were in like baggy hoodies and pants that are so baggy they're like falling down and in that sense did you take your cue from the men in hip-hop in terms of dress as

opposed to the women? Yes exactly. I would watch those videos and instead of being jealous of the women who get to be around the hot men, I would be jealous of the hot men and I wanted to be them. And I wanted to dress like them and I wanted to, you know, be able to act like them. And to be fair I had all sorts of women that I looked up to and artists that I you know are the reason that I am who I am and also I Wouldn't have been able even if I felt the way I did. I wouldn't have been able to achieve it had it not been for the incredibly powerful

strong-willed women artists and people in the public eye that came before me that made it possible for me. So like, my favorite singers are all kind of old jazz singers that I've always looked up to, and I'm always forcing people to watch videos of Ella Fitzgerald singing live and Julie London singing live and, you know,

Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson and all these people. We were watching these videos and every single one of course, because of that period of time, they're all wearing dresses. They're all wearing tight, you know, corseted maybe dresses with their hair done. But like they didn't, they couldn't, they couldn't just not do that. You know, that's part of how things were then. And so thank God that those women came before me because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do anything. My guests are Billie Eilish and

Phineas O'Connell. Their latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, is nominated for seven Grammys. His new solo album is called For Crying Out Loud. We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. For every headline, there's also another story about the people living those headlines. On weekdays, Up First brings you the day's biggest news. On Sundays, we bring you closer with a single story about the people, places, and moments reshaping our world. Your news made personal every Sunday on the Up First podcast from NPR. Every weekday, Up First gives you the news

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Hi, it's Tanya Mosley. Before we get back to the show, the end of year is coming up and our Fresh Air team is looking back at all the fantastic interviews and reviews we've been able to bring you in 2024 because of your support. We had so many delightful introspective, sometimes emotional, sometimes funny, always deeply human conversations with St. Vincent, Al Pacino, Bridget Everett, Pharrell Williams, Jeremy Strong, Ina Garten, and so many others. People you know well, and hopefully new people you learned about for the first time on our show. We're able to do this because of your support, to your local station, or by joining NPR+.

NPR plus has grown a lot this year, and we want to say thank you, an extra special thank you to those supporters. You know who you, an extra special thank you, to those supporters. You know who you are, and we see you. If you don't know what we're talking about, NPR Plus is a great way to support independent public media. When you sign up for a simple reoccurring donation, you support our mission to create a more informed public and get special perks for more than 25 NPR podcasts, including sponsor-free listening, weekly bonus episodes from our Fresh Air archives,

and even exclusive and discounted items from the NPR Shop and NPR Wine Club. When you donate today, you join a community of supporters united in our curiosity about the world and respect for hearing out different perspectives. Join us on the plus side today at plus.npr.org. Thanks. I want to play Ocean Eyes, which is the first thing that you recorded together.

You put it on SoundCloud. It went viral for reasons I don't understand how things by people unknown go viral, but it did and that To be honest with you Terry. I also don't understand. I don't understand Good. Thank you for the validation So I want to play that song because Billy you were talking earlier about how when you started recording when you were 13 You were much younger. Your voice was different, but Phineas, I want to ask you first. I think not many teenage boys would think like, oh, I want to hang out and write songs with

and record with my younger sister who's 13. What made you think, oh, Billy has to sing this? Because I know initially you were going to write it for your band. Well, I think, you know, the three layered answer to that is, Billy and I have always gotten along great, really like spending time together. I'm sure being homeschooled impacted that because we had a, you know,

relationship that might have been more three-dimensional than if we were in separate grades and saw each other a little bit on the weekend and saw each other a little bit while we did our homework or something. We spent a lot of time together having nuanced conversations. That's number one in terms of wanting to spend time with her. Number two is she had a really beautiful voice. And so I think even in addition to liking her as a presence in my life, I saw her talent and respected her talent. And then the third one is I needed a guinea pig.

The third one is I was an amateur producer trying my best to record anyone. And so, Billy as a 13 year old, who basically never sung into a microphone at all, you know, obliged and it was kind of a good match. The kind of back story is, you know, I was in this band, I loved music from the time I was, you know, born and then wanted to be a musician professionally from the time I was about 12 and played in bands all through high school and sort of as I started to learn more about how to produce, I got more interested in pop music and alternative

music. I had this friend who knew that I was in a band and he was like, hey, you produce, right? His name was Frank. He was like, you produce, right? And I was like, I mean, not very well. I was able to see that I was pretty lackluster. He was like, great, I'm sure you're going to be great. I need you to produce that I was pretty lackluster. He was like, great, I'm sure you're going to be great. I need you to produce some songs I'm going to do. He was also very green,

but he just gassed me up. He just believed that I was more talented than I was and I'd play something. He'd be like, that's incredible, bro. That really gave me all this confidence that I would never have otherwise had. And you know, Billy too. I was making music with Billy in my bedroom and being, you know, trying my best and she was kind about it. She was like, oh, I like that. She liked Ocean Eyes. You know, I think that I got so much positive reinforcement when I really needed it. When I find out people have had careers in the arts when they were actively discouraged,

you know, when you hear somebody say, oh man, my mom hated my voice. I'm always kind of blown away because to me, I had enough self-doubt and enough, you know, imposter syndrome that if anyone had said, you're not very good, I would have been like, correct. I agree. You know, let me stop doing this now.

And it really took people like Billy and people like my friend Frank to be like, no, no, no, you're better than you think you are. To kind of give me the confidence that I needed. Okay, so let's listen to Ocean Eyes as recorded by the 13-year-old Billy Eilish and the 17 or 18? I was 18. 18-year- old Phineas. So here it is. Watching you for some time Can't stop staring at those ocean eyes

Burning cities and napalm skies Fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes Your ocean eyes Oh, fire You really know how to make me cry When you give me those ocean eyes I'm scared Never fallin' from wide to side Fallin' into your ocean eyes

Those ocean eyes I've been walkin' through a world That was Ocean Eyes, the first song that Billie Eilish and Phineas recorded together, a song written by Phineas, recorded at home that went viral and really launched their careers. Your mother, when she was homeschooling you, gave you classes on songwriting. Are there insights that she gave you both that stuck with you? Yeah, I mean, honestly, there was one thing that really helped me, which was our mom had us like go home and like watch something on TV or read something and just write down any interesting words that we see or like an interesting sentence and then kind of taking whatever you wrote and just try to make a song out of what you wrote or make a song about the thing that you thought was cool or about this one word

or you know at least incorporating this one word into a song you already wrote just like new ways of of kind of taking pressure off of yourself a little like that really helped me because songwriting always felt like a lot of pressure on me in myself alone. And I think that, I don't know if Finesse would agree, but like something that I think has always helped in songwriting is giving yourself permission to write a bad song.

I think that sometimes you have this high expectation for yourself and you're like no no no it has to be really good but you can't just sit down and make something perfect immediately every time you have to try and fail and that was something that was really hard for me. I'm not good at patience and I'm not good at not being good at something until I am. I want to be really good immediately. And I think it's just something that helped me a lot is just allowing myself to not be amazing

and just make something to make it and not worry if it's good. If you're just joining us, my guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell. And their latest album is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. We'll be right back after a break. This is Fresh Air. You care about what's happening in the world. Let State of the World from NPR keep you informed.

Each day we transport you to a different point on the globe and introduce you to the people living world events. We don't just tell you world news, we take you there. And you can make this journey while you're doing the dishes or driving your car. State of the World podcast from NPR. Vital international stories every day. I want to play another song from your new album, Hit Me Hard and Soft. And this song is called Skinny.

And Billy, it's talking about how people think you look happy because you're skinny, you know, that you lost weight. But you're right, but I still cry. Did losing weight make a difference in your life? And do you like bounce back and forth? That's something so many people in your audience would relate to. Um, yeah. You know, I, like everyone and every every woman suffer with a lot of body image issues and just hatred and dysmorphia and I Always have since I was a kid and I still have that girl in me and You know, I've had a lot of, as a human does, getting thinner and then getting

bigger and then getting fit and then getting not as fit. Your body changes over time, especially depending on how you're living your life. A couple years back when we were making this album, I had been on this like really intense kind of health journey and I had lost a lot of weight and I'd gotten so strong and I was like thinner than I'd ever been and stronger than I'd ever been. But separately, I was like extremely unhappy and unaware of how unhappy I was

until I was happy again kind unaware of how unhappy I was until I was happy again kind of thing. Were you unhappy because you weren't eating enough? No, honestly my fitness journey was like the thing that I held onto that I was the most proud of. But what was really interesting was I felt really proud of my body and how hard I'd worked. I mean I was working out like two hours, like five or six days a week and, you know, wasn't eating gluten and dairy and sugar and past 7 p.m.

and, you know, not a fun way to live at all, but it was something that, you know, I'm an addictive person and that was something that I got very addicted to and I loved that experience. But you were sad. Yeah, I didn't have much else to hold on to and I really had that. I had this kind of journey of my strength, kind of. And within that period of time, I would be on tour and I would come back and I remember every single person that I would see that

I hadn't seen in many weeks would be like, oh my God, you look amazing. You look so skinny. Wow. You look so happy. You look so healthy. Wow, Billy, you just look like you're just glowing like you're just so happy. And it's just so nice to see her so happy. And yeah, she's just doing so great. And it was really interesting because I got obsessed with that validation and I loved it. I loved every single thing that everybody said to me. But then I kind of started to think like, that's really interesting because I'm not happy at all, but I definitely am skinny.

But I also like the body equivalent of like, uh, you know, money doesn't buy you happiness or something where you're like looking the way I thought I wanted to look doesn't make me happy either. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, Skinny was a song that we wrote out of a really, really like uninspired period of time that we had not created anything in and like had no ideas for anything and it was just kind of a depressing period of time and we were sitting in a studio and we wanted to write something I really wanted to write something and couldn't come up with anything

and Phineas started playing chords and I started riffing on melodies and the lyrics came about because Phineas could see how I was feeling and kind of, you know, starts asking me questions and I start talking about how I feel and the things I've been going through and he's just so good at seeing me like nobody else does and like I don't even and being able to put it into words in a way that, you know, I didn't even realize I was feeling, you know? And like, he said that lyric, people say I look happy just because I got skinny, but the old me is still me and maybe the real me and I think she's pretty. And that was his lyric. And it's funny that he wrote that because it's me, it's how I felt. But it's

just the magic of like, with somebody who a is such a genius but also knows you like nobody else does. That's a great relationship to have. Let's hear the song. This is Skinny from Billie Eilish's new album which is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. I fell in love for the first time With a friend, it's a good sign Feeling off when I feel fine Twenty-one took a lifetime People say I look happy Just because I got skinny

But the old me is still me and maybe the real me and I think she's pretty Cry And you know what I'm Am I acting my age now? Am I already on the way out? When I step off the stage I'm a bird in a cage That's Skinny and my guests are Billie Eilish and Finney The internet is hungry for the mean, it's kind of funny, and somebody's gotta feed it. That's Skinny, and my guests are Billie Eilish and Phineas, and their new album is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. I think some of your fans think that you're reading their mind or telling their story.

My favorite is like- No pressure. I know. My favorite is like when I put a song out, when we put a song out and like people are like you know, how did she know I was feeling, you know, feeling this? Like what, where is she hiding in my room and has been hiding for the last like year of my life to write this song that's exactly my life. I think that's like one of the most magical parts about music.

And I've had that as a fan too. And Phineas has too. Like you hear a song and you're like, oh my God, this is exactly my situation. How could that be? But it's just that it can be because we're just all like suffering together. And it's nice to know that you're not alone in that. Phineas, you have a new album, and I wanna play a song from that.

So I wanna end with Family Feud, because your family is so important to you both, and the way you still operate as a family, because I think your parents are often touring with you, or at least they used to. So this is your song, Phineas, it's from your new album. Do you want to just say a couple of words about writing it? Sure, I, we had just finished making Billy's album

and it was about to come out, and I knew that this, you know, multi-year world tour was on the horizon for her and that I wouldn't be on it. I was just sort of thinking about my relationship with her and how kind of public our family had become. And, you know, she's a public figure. I'm a lesser public figure. There's a lot of attention and judgment paid to us both,

and especially to Billy. And it was just sort of a rumination on that. Billy Eilish, Phineas O'Connell, thank you both so much. I really appreciate you coming on our show and good luck with the rest of your tours. Thank you so much for having us. Thanks so much, Terri. Mom and dad are out of town, the two of us are grownups now. Pepper had to be put down

Hard to take, hard to own Not hard to break a collarbone A little late but not alone And you're only 22, and the world is watching you, Judging everything you do. That's Family Feud from Phineas' new album For Cryin' Out Loud. Billie Eilish and Phineas' latest album together is called Hit Me Hard and Soft. It's currently nominated for seven Grammys. This is fresh air. Our critic-at-large John Power spends his time leapfrogging between movies, books,

TV shows, music, and sporting events. He didn't get to review everything he liked this year. So what he does is each year at the end of the year he chooses a few things he didn't get to that he still wants to celebrate. This year's edition includes everything from a comic performance to a political documentary to a great moment at the Paris Olympics. Every December I look at my list of the things that I've read, watched, and listened to during the year. And every December I come across things that I flat-out loved yet somehow never get around to talking about. Well, I want to share these pleasures now. Although they're a far cry from raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, these are

a few of my favorite things. I'd gasp in surprise at all fours, Miranda July's hilariously unpredictable novel about a middle-aged artist who leaves her family to drive to New York from Los Angeles, but only gets to the LA suburbs before she falls for a young rental car worker, checks into a cheap motel, and spends a fortune redecorating her room there. All Four's is sometimes described as a book about paramenopause, the transitional stage before menopause. Yet this flattens it into sociology and self-help. July's mind is far too unruly and interesting for that. Perverse, unrepentant, sometimes dirty, and often laugh-out-loud funny, I

couldn't stop reading passages to my girlfriend. It's a one-of-a-kind book about a woman cannonballing into her search for a new self and a new life. You never know where it's headed. You know exactly where things are headed in Soundtrack to a Coup d'état, an inventive documentary about the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the elected prime minister of the newly independent Congo, who was killed at the behest of the American and Belgian governments. This is no grimly realistic sermon, but a jaunty montage film blending fabulous archival footage, amazing interviews, CIA machinations, and oodles of black music from the likes of Louis Armstrong and Nina Simone.

Along the way, Belgian filmmaker Johann Grimmin-imenpres quotes poet Octavio Paz's line, "'When history sleeps, it speaks in dreams.'" Grimenpres's movie unfolds like one of those dreams. Life has turned giddily surreal in the Hulu series Interior Chinatown, based on the national book award-winning novel by Charles Yu. Its high point is the star-making performance by Ronnie Cheng, the Malaysian comedian you may know from The Daily Show. Cheng is uproarious as Fatty Choi, a low-ambition restaurant worker who's suddenly forced into waiting tables. He treats the customers so rudely that, ironically,

he becomes a sensation. Here, he approaches a white couple at a table. What? Hi. Are you our waiter? No. I'm just carrying a pad and pen for fun. I'm wearing this vest because it makes me look good.

Okay. I guess we'll take the orange chicken and maybe some... Orange chicken, orange chicken, why? Sorry? Why come here if you're gonna order something just covered in dipping sauce? Do you even like Chinese food? So what should we get?

I don't know man, it's a Chinese restaurant. So maybe you should order something that Chinese people would eat. Even your pronunciation makes my ears bleed. And why do you always have to have ice in your water? It's bad for your body. Drink tea, we give you free tea. Idiots.

Oh my God. That guy is amazing. We have to tell Kylie and Karen about this place. Karen will flip. I mean she can't eat anything on this menu, but like she needs to come here. The humor is slyer in my favorite mystery novel this year, The Lover of No Fixed Abode by Carlo Frutaro and Franco Lucentini, a hugely popular Italian literary team. Set in Venice, it's about a middle-aged signora who's an art scout for big auction houses,

who finds herself attracted to an enigmatic tour guide leader, Mr. Silveira, who seems to know everything and greets every situation with a different inflection of the word ah. The mystery is, who is he? Shimmering with wit and bursting with an insider's knowledge of Venice, the lover of no fixed abode builds to a solution so unexpected that not one person in a million will guess it. It's a minor classic. Two big classics are the fifties movies that got theatrical re-releases this year. Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, in

which a village hires seven swordsmen to protect them from bandits, and The Wages of Fear, Henri-Georges Clouzot's excruciatingly suspenseful story of four exiles in a poor Latin American town who must transport a shipment of nitroglycerin in ramshackle trucks. Both movies are magnificent in themselves. Their action scenes are still breathtaking. But they possess a special interest, because in them you can see a Japanese director and a French one laying down the template for today's Hollywood blockbusters. And they're better than our current action pictures in one crucial way.

From their white-knuckle stunts to their revelations of character, everything in them is human scale. My favorite sports moment this year was also Alive with Humanity. It featured Simone Biles, whose all-around gold medal at the Paris Olympics confirmed her as the greatest woman gymnast of all time. Yet what I loved wasn't her style in winning, which was, of course, phenomenal, but her grace in losing. In the final event, the floor exercise, where she normally reigns supreme, she was bested by Rebecca Andrade, the superb Brazilian gymnast who'd spent her career losing over and over to Biles. And what did Biles do when she lost? She didn't cry,

I'm still the goat. She didn't whine that the judges had cheated her. She didn't say that Andraje was lucky or actually no good. Instead, on the medal stand, she and teammate Jordan Childs, who won bronze, literally bowed to Andraje. They bowed to her skill, to her bravery in overcoming multiple surgeries, to her always being a worthy opponent. It was a gesture of respect that, far from diminishing Biles, only made her greatness more incandescent. A valuable lesson as we entered the new year. John Powers is our critic at large. By the way, the first thing that he talked about

at the top of his review was the novel, All Four by Miranda July. And coincidentally, Thursday, Miranda July will be my guest. If you're one of over 100 million people in the US on TikTok, that may end on January 19th. A new law is forcing the Beijing-based company to find a non-Chinese buyer for the site or face a ban in the U.S. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll look at what this means and if the Supreme Court or Trump could intervene. I hope you'll

join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers, Anne-Marie Boldenado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yacundy, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Sivi Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show.

Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.