{"id":383449,"date":"2026-04-17T01:42:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T01:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/383449\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T01:42:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T01:42:16","slug":"finneas-breaks-down-beef-season-2-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/383449\/","title":{"rendered":"Finneas Breaks Down ‘Beef’ Season 2 Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn episode 2 of Netflix\u2019s \u201cBeef<\/a>,\u201d Oscar Isaac<\/a>\u2018s character, Josh Martin, starts jamming on his Moog synthesizer. He\u2019s not good at it. \u201cIt\u2019s really amateurish,\u201d Oscar and Grammy Award-winning songwriter Finneas<\/a> says.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn season 2, Josh is the general manager at an ultra-posh country club. His wife, Lindsay (Carey Mulligan<\/a>), picks out fabrics and seems discontented with life. When young couple Ashley (Cailee Spaeny<\/a>\u00a0) and Austin (Charles Melton<\/a>) 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 \u201cbeef.\u201d However, the power dynamics here are more complicated, especially as things start to unravel, and the class and generational divide become more apparent.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinneas<\/a>, who made his debut as a TV composer last year on AppleTV+\u2019s \u201cDisclaimer,\u201d 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, \u201cand he bought it because he\u2019s a big Hot Chip fan.\u201d He adds, \u201cHe\u2019s probably an amateur and plays it a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs 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, \u201cHe said, \u2018Send me anything you think I need to know about. He was being a good student.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIsaac would send along Moog synthesizer playlists. \u201cFinally, I was like, \u2018Your character sucks at this. He\u2019s not a good synth player,\u201d 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. \u201cHe played it better than me,\u201d Finneas laughs.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the country club a key setting, Finneas wanted to create a textural sound. He says, \u201cI found synths that I could play and make the sound like swarms of bees.\u201d He adds, \u201cI recorded sprinkler systems at a golf course near my house, and used those as the rhythmic component.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs 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. \u201cI 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tJosh has become jaded. \u201cHe\u2019s very effusive and apologetic, and their relationship has become dysfunctional.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIn contrast, Ashley and Austin have the idea that what happens to other people isn\u2019t going to happen to anyone else because they\u2019re so in love. They\u2019re idealists. Dumb optimism became their sound. \u201cThere\u2019s a piece of music that ends the first episode, where they\u2019re talking about how they\u2019re going to go blackmail Carey and Oscar\u2019s characters, and I wrote this piece of music for that scene. I called the piece \u201cDummies\u201d because Austin is explaining late-stage capitalism, but it\u2019s very clear that he doesn\u2019t really understand it. And then Ashley is like, \u201cWell, we should just blackmail them.\u201d Finnease continues, \u201cI thought that all of its exploration of class differences, and modern economic corporate structure was so on the nose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe final episodes culminate with the characters in Korea. Finneas says, \u201cThe worst music I could make is my uneducated white guy take on Korean drama. And so I didn\u2019t try. I really just focused on Chairwoman Park and her relationship with her husband, and her relationship with the younger couple.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe notes of all the characters, she is the most powerful participant in this universe that everybody\u2019s bowing to her. There\u2019s a feeling that this woman could either fire you or have you killed. So, that sound was what he describes as a \u201cheavy, subby, rhythmic thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, he did watch the episodes at least 100 times, and he wrote a ton of music. \u201cI had to write a lot because there are a lot of minutes of music per episode.\u201d He adds, \u201cI wrote three times that amount because I was trying and failing and trying and failing, and making stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAudiences will note the three needle drops by his sister and collaborator Billie Eilish. In one episode, \u201cBittersuite\u201d is used in the main titles, in another Austin is listening to \u201cWhat Was I Made For,\u201d and in episode 7, \u201cBad Guy\u201d plays. Finneas found the humor in it, particularly in episode 7, where he plays \u201ca really douchey version of myself. When I went to watch the final cut, they put \u201cBad Guy\u201d in it. The idea that I\u2019m working out to my own work like that, I\u2019m producing all this music, and then I\u2019m in the gym listening to it, I thought was so funny.\u201d He acknowledges the music he made with Eilish is how he got the job. \u201cI think Sonny (showrunner Lee Sung-jin) loved our last album, and listened to it a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFinneas was game to have that many needle drops in the show. \u201cI owe everything I have to the music I\u2019ve made with Billie so any focus I can pull to that I\u2019m very excited about.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In episode 2 of Netflix\u2019s \u201cBeef,\u201d Oscar Isaac\u2018s character, Josh Martin, starts jamming on his Moog synthesizer. He\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[5589,156,150739,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-383449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-beef","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-finneas","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}