In episode 2 of Netflix’s “Beef,” Oscar Isaac‘s character, Josh Martin, starts jamming on his Moog synthesizer. He’s not good at it. “It’s really amateurish,” Oscar and Grammy Award-winning songwriter Finneas says.
In season 2, Josh is the general manager at an ultra-posh country club. His wife, Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), picks out fabrics and seems discontented with life. When young couple Ashley (Cailee Spaeny ) and Austin (Charles Melton) catch them in an all-out argument, the lower-income Gen-Z pair suddenly find themselves with some leverage to blackmail and create a new “beef.” However, the power dynamics here are more complicated, especially as things start to unravel, and the class and generational divide become more apparent.
Finneas, who made his debut as a TV composer last year on AppleTV+’s “Disclaimer,” explains that Josh is really bad at handling money, and the Moog synth is something he keeps in his man cave, along with other memorabilia, “and he bought it because he’s a big Hot Chip fan.” He adds, “He’s probably an amateur and plays it a little bit.”
As Finneas was thinking about the music for that scene, Isaac reached out to him. The actor wanted to go to a synth store in Los Angeles. Finneas says, “He said, ‘Send me anything you think I need to know about. He was being a good student.”
Isaac would send along Moog synthesizer playlists. “Finally, I was like, ‘Your character sucks at this. He’s not a good synth player,” says Finneas. For that scene, he wrote a piece of music that was purposefully crude and rudimentary. Once on set, Isaac had done his homework and knew how to play the piece. “He played it better than me,” Finneas laughs.
That was the most fun to write, but elsewhere, he had the rest of the score to piece together. It seemed fitting to write music that would match the environments that start at the Montecito Country Club and ends with the characters in Korea.
With the country club a key setting, Finneas wanted to create a textural sound. He says, “I found synths that I could play and make the sound like swarms of bees.” He adds, “I recorded sprinkler systems at a golf course near my house, and used those as the rhythmic component.”
As the world of the characters start to unfold, he thought early on about scoring the first episode and where that would lead audiences by episode 8. “I would ratchet up the tension and anxiety. It went through different stages. What became their sound, more so than instrumentation, was this naive form of optimism.
Josh has become jaded. “He’s very effusive and apologetic, and their relationship has become dysfunctional.”
In contrast, Ashley and Austin have the idea that what happens to other people isn’t going to happen to anyone else because they’re so in love. They’re idealists. Dumb optimism became their sound. “There’s a piece of music that ends the first episode, where they’re talking about how they’re going to go blackmail Carey and Oscar’s characters, and I wrote this piece of music for that scene. I called the piece “Dummies” because Austin is explaining late-stage capitalism, but it’s very clear that he doesn’t really understand it. And then Ashley is like, “Well, we should just blackmail them.” Finnease continues, “I thought that all of its exploration of class differences, and modern economic corporate structure was so on the nose.”
The final episodes culminate with the characters in Korea. Finneas says, “The worst music I could make is my uneducated white guy take on Korean drama. And so I didn’t try. I really just focused on Chairwoman Park and her relationship with her husband, and her relationship with the younger couple.”
He notes of all the characters, she is the most powerful participant in this universe that everybody’s bowing to her. There’s a feeling that this woman could either fire you or have you killed. So, that sound was what he describes as a “heavy, subby, rhythmic thing.”
Yes, he did watch the episodes at least 100 times, and he wrote a ton of music. “I had to write a lot because there are a lot of minutes of music per episode.” He adds, “I wrote three times that amount because I was trying and failing and trying and failing, and making stuff.”
Audiences will note the three needle drops by his sister and collaborator Billie Eilish. In one episode, “Bittersuite” is used in the main titles, in another Austin is listening to “What Was I Made For,” and in episode 7, “Bad Guy” plays. Finneas found the humor in it, particularly in episode 7, where he plays “a really douchey version of myself. When I went to watch the final cut, they put “Bad Guy” in it. The idea that I’m working out to my own work like that, I’m producing all this music, and then I’m in the gym listening to it, I thought was so funny.” He acknowledges the music he made with Eilish is how he got the job. “I think Sunny (showrunner Lee Sung-jin) loved our last album, and listened to it a lot.”
Finneas was game to have that many needle drops in the show. “I owe everything I have to the music I’ve made with Billie so any focus I can pull to that I’m very excited about.”
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