Billie Eilish & Finneas Wrote This Song For The Fictional Boyband 4*Town In Pixar’s Turning Red
In the upcoming Disney/Pixar movie Turning Red, set for release in March, an overachieving 13-year-old girl named Mei wakes up one day to discover she has transformed into a gigantic red panda, a development that apparently has something to do with her family’s ancient connection to the animal. Beyond the resemblance to Kafka’s Metamorphosis, there’s also an Incredible Hulk angle — Mei turns into the panda whenever she feels a strong emotion. The film is set in the early 2000s, and thus, Mei and her friends are obsessed with a fictional boyband called 4*Town. In real life, 4*Town’s songs were written by the chart-topping, Grammys-dominating sister-brother duo of Billie Eilish and Finneas.
The new Turning Red trailer out today is largely soundtracked by an actual boyband hit, *NSYNC’s eternal banger “It’s Gonna Be Me” from 2000’s No Strings Attached. (Cowritten by Max Martin, it was the group’s only Hot 100 #1 hit — yes, it charted higher than “Bye Bye Bye” — so look for it sometime next year in the Number Ones.) They’re apparently playing off the “It’s gonna be May” meme, given that the character’s name is Mei.
However, the first music in the trailer is one of three songs Eilish and Finneas wrote for 4*Town. Check it out below.
Turning Red hits theaters on 3/11, so hold steady until then.