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Billie Eilish - HIT ME HARD AND SOFT

Posted: 5/19/2024 by Leilani Krady ( See All) Show: Tuesday from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

(2024) HIT ME HARD AND SOFT - Billie Eilish

Billie Eilish carved herself a wildly successful niche in the zeitgeist of teenagers drowning in their own heads during the second half of the 2010s. After 2016’s “ocean eyes” came her 2017 EP, don’t smile at me, which proved not only her talent as an artist but her ability to construct a musical narrative and persona that cut through all the BS and gripped the inner world of freshly-conscious Gen Zers. Hits like “bellyache” and “idontwannabeyouanymore” are characteristic because they reveal two threads within Eilish’s musical universe that garnered her widespread popularity: The first being her unabashed willingness to explore and embrace the macabre, and the second being her determination to truthfully and explicitly give a voice to the depressed and anxious realities experienced by an unprecedented proportion of her young audience.

Both of these threads wove their way into the hearts of people around Eilish’s age across the world. She was a catalyst for a new type of popstar, one who was, for lack of a better phrase, not like the other girls. She exclusively wore baggy clothes, she spoke openly about her mental health issues, and she released music that caused genuine parental concern. In short, she and her music represented the antithesis of happy-go-lucky stereotypical popstardom. It was raw, it was real, it was unheard of in the mainstream, and it spoke to the taboo darkness that every teenager experiences.

Don’t smile at me was followed up by her Grammy-winning 2019 debut album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? Devoid of capitalized song titles, WWAFAWDWG was an expertly executed expansion of ideas first proposed in DSAM. “bad guy” became a massive hit, “i love you” remains on sad playlists to this day, and “bury a friend” obliterated the boundaries of what a pop song could be with its visceral lyrics, tooth-drill-screeching sound effects, and horror-movie-style music video. The 2019 Album of the Year immediately became a classic in the genre and showed that Eilish could excel in the dark and gritty niche that she has carved out for herself.

Coming out of a pandemic-intermission, Eilish pulled a 180 with her 2021 release Happier Than Ever. She dyed her hair blonde, went on the cover of Vogue, and released a disjointed album that explored new sounds and themes. Don’t get me wrong; Happier Than Ever features some genuinely fantastic, fresh, and innovative songs like “Therefore I Am,” “Happier Than Ever,” “GOLDWING,” etcetera. As a complete package, though, it suffers from confusing song order choices and multiple unnecessary filler songs that, if cut, would’ve improved the album’s composition overall. Although I won’t get into the trenches here, some of my main gripes include the misguided decision to put an almost 4 minute spoken word piece smack-dab in the middle of an album which is already pushing it on length as well as the similarly odd choice to end the album on the painfully average and uninspired “Male Fantasy” rather than the explosive, scream-in-your-car penultimate track “Happier Than Ever”. Happier Than Ever represented an important side-quest in Eilish’s career which broke her self-made mold, freed her of expectations, and expanded her thematic and sonic resume in a way that left doors wide open for whatever direction she chose to pursue next.

This direction arrived on May 17th, 2024 with Eilish’s 3rd studio album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. Despite her (justified) decision to not release any singles in the leadup to the album’s release, a couple of snippet leaks and an extremely personal Rolling Stones interview had expectations high. Fans of Eilish’s WWAFAWDWG aesthetic and sound are the clear winners here. Eilish herself describes (in the Rolling Stones interview by Angie Martoccio) HMHAS as a sort of homecoming to her pre-Happier Than Ever self: “I feel like this album is me … it feels like the When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? version of me.” She also admits what was evident to many long-time fans--that Happier Than Ever was “a coping mechanism of an album.”

But HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is a return to, as her brother/co-writer/producer Finneas says, “what we do best.” Eilish describes this album as feeling “like I’m coming back to the girl that I was. I’ve been grieving her. I’ve been looking for her in everything, and it's almost like she got drowned by the world and the media. I don’t remember when she went away.”

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is the perfect evolution of Billie Eilish. It is the culmination of eight years of musical growth and self-discovery. While being rooted in the Eilish-pioneered macabre-pop ambiance of her first album, her 3rd album ties in the thematic growth and experimentation of the 2nd album all while featuring the most mature and musically cutting-edge version of Eilish to date. It also cuts out the unnecessary fluff that bogged down Happier Than Ever--HMHAS is a perfectly tight, thematically and sonically unified, no-skip 10-song package. It reinforces what we already know: That Eilish has an uncanny ability to tap into the current cultural climate of her generation and release music at the opportune time for her listeners who have literally grown up with her. Thus, with HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, Billie Eilish is back.

“SKINNY” tenderly transitions us out of the golden-but-sad realm of Happier Than Ever and into the reawakened deep-sea black-and-blue synth and electronica of HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. It reminds me of how boygenius’s “Without You Without Them” opens The Record in a very sonically similar way to how “Ketchum, ID” ends their self-titled prior album (acapella or nearly acapella, all three members harmonizing, etc). “SKINNY” underscores Eilish’s characteristic soaring soprano with a deliciously indie guitar melody. Lyrically it also feels quite Happier Than Ever, with discussions of fame, body image, getting older, and unbalanced relationships. The last minute of the song is an unexpected but gorgeous orchestral outro. This string arrangement leads us directly into HMHAS’s leading banger.

With “LUNCH”, Billie Eilish has thrown her hat in the ring for sexiest sapphic banger of the summer. It’s pulsating, groovy, and endlessly stuck in everyone’s head. In a sort of “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter manner, “LUNCH” opens with its chorus, which has been floating around on TikTok and my head as a snipped in the weeks leading up to May 17th: ‘I could eat that girl for lunch/yeah, she dances on my tongue/tastes like she might be the one/and I could never get enough/I could buy her so much stuff/it's a craving, not a crush, oh.’ The baseline and the guitar dance around each other and the synth is indescribably delicious. It ends with a melody of inhales and exhales, which I will probably never stop thinking about. No notes. With “LUNCH”, Eilish is back and better than ever.

In classic Eilish manner, the sultry dance banger is followed by a monumental vibe shift that she somehow manages to totally pull off. “CHIHIRO” also had a snippet of the verse floating around the internet (‘not today, maybe tomorrow/open up the door/can you open up the door…’). It takes us on a well-deserved 5-minute journey across pulsing electronic beats, echoing vocals, and a hauntingly out-of-this-world bridge. The synth melody which takes us to the climactic bridge first unassumingly starts throbbing underneath Eilish’s tender voice until it becomes so loud and demanding that it grabs listeners by the shoulders and throws them out of the windows of their comfort zone. Eilish is now yelling in the background, ‘I, I don't know why I called/I don't know you at all/I don't know you’. I can think of no other comparison other than Eilish’s own extremely underappreciated song, “NDA”. “NDA” always stood out to me on Happier Than Ever, and I think it could fit on this new album. The striking build to the bridge on “CHIHIRO” reminds me of the crescendoing build to the outro on “NDA”--the way Eilish is loudly pleading only to be drowned out by synthesizers is an expert artistic choice. Every time the synth melody before the bridge starts to build in “CHIHIRO” I half expect to hear Eilish belt out ‘did I take it too far?/now I know what you are/you hit me so hard/I saw stars.’

“BIRDS OF A FEATHER” blesses our ears with a rare genuinely sweet Billie Eilish love song. It’s a beautiful demonstration of her vocal range, it features a classic Finneas/Billie electronic beat and melody, it will go on love playlists everywhere, and it’s just plain beautiful. I am personally a huge fan of the post-chorus: ‘I knew you in another life/you had that same look in your eyes/I love you, don't act so surprised.’ Another smash hit.

“WILDFLOWER” is the most stripped back song on the album. It starts off with a slow guitar strum which eventually builds. Eilish’s crooning voice absolutely oozes with feelings of regret and guilt, which are the main emotions in the song. Again, the chorus melody is intriguing and haunting. These feelings are in line with the song’s subject matter, which describes the narrator (presumably Eilish) harboring extremely mixed feelings about entering a relationship with her friend’s ex--and how it haunted her for their whole relationship. The belting vocalizations that enter across the later chorus and bridge are a great touch, contributing to the haunting ambiance. This song is sonically and thematically riddled with ghosts--something only Eilish and Finneas can achieve so well.

“THE GREATEST” starts off innocently enough with a simple plucky guitar melody and eventually culminates in an all-out rock breakdown. In a more recent Rolling Stones article featuring omitted interview snippets from the original article, Eilish accurately says that “'Happier Than Ever' walked so that 'The Greatest' could run.” It has a tension-building chorus (sort of akin to “i love you”) where you can feel the pain of sacrificing everything for someone who doesn’t seem to care. The line ‘doing what's right/without a reward/and we don't have to fight/when it's not worth fighting for’ is exceptionally painful. Again, Eilish shows off her vocal maturity and belts all across the incredible rock-infused bridge. Although “THE GREATEST” is perhaps more sad-rock than the more rage-rock of “Happier Than Ever,” it is still a worthy successor.

“L’AMOUR DE MA VIE” is the first of multiple 2-part songs on the latter half of HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. By this I mean that the beginning and ending of these songs are so sonically different from each other that they function as two distinct but complementary parts of the greater whole. Think “GONE, GONE / THANK YOU” from Tyler, The Creator’s IGOR. “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE” is witty and self aware, with the first part featuring an almost “Billie Bossa Nova” sort of guitar melody. It has a jazzy breakdown for the second chorus, which is scrumptious--Billie’s ‘then you moved on [*chuckle*] immediately (bum, bum, bum)’ is impeccable. Just when you think you know what this song is gonna be, the 3.5-minute mark rolls around, and you’re introduced to a thumping beat, 80s-synths, and hyper-auto-tuned vocals that make her sound like she’s singing in a retro video game. This part of the song is vibrant and pulsating. The lyrics ‘wanna know what I told her/with her hand on my shoulder?/you were so mediocre/and we're so glad it's over now’ were also released in a snippet online in the lead up to the album's release. Both parts of the song work together perfectly in a way that only Billie Eilish can pull off. Another incredible song.

“THE DINER” is from the perspective of a stalker. The sonic landscape is something out of a retro murder mystery movie. You can imagine the subject creeping around in a cartoon-villain-esque manner. The macabre subject matter and sonic atmosphere make this song feel like it would fit well on WWAFAWDWG. Eilish’s low and sly voice is reverbed to give the song an even more creepy and haunting ambiance. She sounds like she is singing into one of those echo microphone kids toys from the 2000s in a dark room in a big chair with window-blind striped shadows across her face. This type of genuinely creepy pop masterpiece is emblematic of what Billie Eilish has always done best.

The video-game-esque synth that smacks you in the face at the start of “BITTERSUITE” feels like something off of IGOR (maybe the initial droning of “IGOR’S THEME”). This song is another 2-parter. “BITTERSUITE” feels like a perfect example of Billie and Finneas incorporating some of the new sonic and lyrical experiences gained from Happier Than Ever into the older WWAFAWDWG sonic landscape and mood. Lyrically and rhythmically it draws from HTE, but it is steeped in a deep dark oceanic moodiness first worked with on her first album. The build in the pre-chorus and the chorus itself is brooding and carnal, with the pulsating synth and Eilish’s soaring voice locked into a stupefying dance. After the first minute and a half we enter the second part of the song which has a very “I Didn’t Change My Number” sort of rhythm to it. Both halves of “BITTERSUITE” work together to produce a very anticipatory atmosphere of tense desire.

“BLUE” is the final track on HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. It is also a 2-parter. It is beautiful, devastating, and, of course, absolutely soaking in deep hues of black and blue. The chorus sets the tone: ‘I try to live in black and white, but I'm so blue/I'd like to mean it when I say I'm over you/but that's still not true (blue)/and I'm still so blue, oh.’ The melody dances across a chasmic bass and guitar. Part 2 hits around two minutes in. It is a simple lullaby, but with Eilish-style ‘listen before i go’ sirens in the background for ambiance. The bridge introduces an altered Eilish voice and creepy audio effects which carry us into the last chorus and bridge, which serve as the synthesis of both parts of “BLUE”. The ending portion even brings in another orchestral strings section, which brings us back to the beginning with the string arrangement on “SKINNY”. A gorgeous way to wrap up a stunning album, perfectly priming the listener to loop back around to the beginning.

Recommended If You Like: Anything Billie Eilish has ever done; pop in general
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