Disney Releases TURNING RED Soundtrack Featuring Tracks By Billie Eilish

According to "Turning Red" director Domee Shi, if you set a 13-year-old girl's coming-of-age story in the early 2000s, it's pretty much mandatory to include a boy band. "We needed our character Mei to be obsessed with something that her mom would not approve of," said Shi. "Boy bands were the first step into the world of boys for a lot of girls that age. The guys were all super pretty, polished, soft and loving, and they had a way of bringing girls and their besties together. Plus, I thought it'd be really cool to create an animated boy band."

Enter Pixar's first-ever boy band, 4*Town. GRAMMY-winning Music Producer and President of Walt Disney Music Tom MacDougall arranged a meeting with the "Turning Red" filmmakers and singer-songwriters Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell. "When deciding what musical artists to meet with on our films, we don't look to who's the most popular, but who's best suited to the creative needs of the project," says MacDougall. "In the case of Billie and Finneas, we were lucky to have both."

Adds producer Lindsey Collins, "We met with them and pitched this crazy idea of a boy band, asking if they'd be interested in writing and producing the songs. They were!"

"I don't know anyone who wouldn't be interested in working on a Pixar movie," says O'Connell, the youngest ever to win the GRAMMY for producer of the year (non-classical). Boy band music, he says, "is really like a masterclass in simplicity and memorability. It's a really catchy melody, harmonies, claps and choreography. It's so infectious and appealing with these young heart-throbby teens who the kids can't help but fall in love with."

The brother-sister writing team 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," says Eilish, who made history as the youngest artist to win in all the major categories at the 62nd 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."

Filmmakers wanted three songs, each fulfilling a different purpose-and each embracing the style of some of the most popular boy-band songs. "The first one is the hit that everybody knows," says Shi. "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."

Listen to the new album here:

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