For three years, Billie Eilish fans have long awaited the release of her third album and it’s safe to say that the album lived up to the hype. Billie Elish’s third official album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT hit every listener with a roller coaster of emotions, its ups and downs, its high and lows, it made waves both hard and soft. Though only ten tracks in length, those 43 minutes of music are pure symphonic bliss.
The album takes the listener through Eilish’s mind with her voice and her brother Finneas’ production as their guide. The album begins with the slow, melodic sound of SKINNY which addresses Eilish growing up and maturing in the public eye. At 13 years old, her single Ocean Eyes threw her into the limelight of the media, which kept a careful eye on her as she aged into a now grown woman. As she says in SKINNY, “The internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny and somebody’s gotta feed it.” This bittersweet lyric leads to a beautiful mash of strings that make a come back in the final track of the album BLUE.
Now, I must admit to being biased in this review. I have been a Billie Eilish fan for a long time. I’ve been a fan since Ocean Eyes, and her time on Soundcloud. A little history lesson for you, Eilish had an unreleased song called True Blue written before her first album and performed and recorded at a small venue. Many fans fell in love and begged for the song to be released, only for it to be scrapped continuously for every project Eilish released. When the track list was made public prior to the release of HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, many fans, including myself, swarmed at the fact that the final track was simply titled BLUE.
BLUE begins with the initial sound, melody, and lyrics of the original song, filling old fans with a sense of nostalgia. While the lyrics aren’t entirely the same, as she does something she’s done on her first album with the final song calling back to lyrics from the rest of the album, the chorus remains the same as True Blue. The song slowly transitions into a different version of the song, the “new blue” as fans are calling it. This type of reworking within their own song is something that occurs countless times across the album. The ninth track BITTERSUITE is arguably three songs within one song, going through two main musical and vocal transitions within the song, and L’AMOUR DE MA VIE contains an intense transition between a jazzy cafe sound to a synthy club beat.
Much of this rhythmic masterpiece can be attributed to Eilish’s brother and producer Finneas, who holds a music career of his own while touring and creating music with his younger sister. The star of the production lies in the third track CHIHIRO, inspired by the main character with the same name in Hayao Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away. The lyrics travel through parallels to the film with the repeated usage of “Open up the door” as an homage to the repeated door imagery within the film. The consistent drum beat matched with heightened backing vocals and Stranger Things-esk synths make the song so much more than it is.
Though most lyrics within the songs allude to Eilish’s past relationship with The Neighbourhood’s lead singer Jesse Rutherford, quite a few songs address other issues that plagued Eilish’s life. Most notably, track eight’s THE DINER sings from the perspective of one of Eilish’s many stalkers. The lyrics call attention to the delusion these stalkers live within and the lengths they go to to become closer to Eilish. On a lighter note, track four’s BIRDS OF A FEATHER takes the cake as the most upbeat song on the bittersweet album. Discussing a healthy and unbreakable relationship, the song brings a much-needed happiness to the album. Track five and six WILDFLOWER and THE GREATEST are filled with some of the most vocally impressive work that Eilish has done in recent years, and track two’s LUNCH calls attention to Eilish’s recent openness with her sexuality and her prideful nature towards it.
