The opening track on her third album, "Hit Me Hard and Soft," "Skinny," has 22-year-old Billie Eilish singing, "Twenty-one took a lifetime."
That's something any woman of her age could say—math is all. However, Eilish had already accomplished a lifetime in her career, which began in 2015 when she was a teenager uploading songs to SoundCloud, even before she was old enough to vote. Since then, Eilish has amassed billions of streams, two Oscars, a slew of Grammy Awards, and a feature film. She cautiously embraces some while tampering down some pop expectations on "Hit Me Hard and Soft."
Eilish possesses the metanarrative acumen of her digital-era age in addition to the time-honored musicianship that award shows respect. With help from her brother and songwriting partner Finneas, her blend of unvarnished disclosures, elegant melodies, and cunning productions has inspired and educated countless imitators.
Their historically informed pop reworks soundtracks, punk, folk, electronica, bossa nova, industrial rock, musical theater, and more. With the ability to glide over beats and shocks and approach a microphone like a confidante, Eilish embodies the composure of a classic crooner for all of them. Her tone can range from being hushed and personal to cynical and eye-rolling; at certain junctures, she displays her ability to belt.
"When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" Eilish's 2019 debut album, mapped teenage obsessions, gothic nightmares, and enduring traumas with a hint of humor thrown in. She responded immediately to the attention, shock, exploitation, stalking, tiredness, and unexpected power that popularity brought her with her second song, "Happier Than Ever," released in 2021.
"Skinny" is a subdued report on Eilish's rise to fame. She sings, "Am I acting my age now?/Am I already on the way out?," sharing reflections on her body type, her experience finding nontoxic love, her loneliness, and her resignation to social media: "Someone has to feed the internet's hunger for the meanest kind of funny."
Even so, "Skinny" is a transition song, a farewell look as Eilish advances from her very unique circumstance into her interpretation of more generic pop songwriting, even though it ties back to "Happier Than Ever."
The ostensibly "difficult" third album from Eilish, an artistically self-conscious hitmaker, demands self-redefinition, reflection on the past, and a challenge to fair-weather admirers. Eilish and Finneas continue to explore their sonic landscape with "Hit Me Hard and Soft," relishing in electronics and velvety nuances as they alternately respect and distort pop forms. Simultaneously, Eilish accepts a more traditional task: writing songs that aren't solely about herself, especially love ballads.
The album is a tight 10-song collection that stands in purposeful contrast to lengthy streaming-era albums like those that Beyoncé and Taylor Swift have recently dropped. Instead of releasing an album that can be selectively listened to, Eilish has asked her fans to listen to the album as a whole, akin to an analog-era LP. She also declined to release any advance singles. "So when can I hear the next one?" is a seemingly carefree question that Eilish adds at the end of the last song, "Blue," just in case the previous ten songs sound careless rather than orderly.
The album has softer than harder hits. For a significant portion of it, Eilish performs her soft, Oscar-winning ballads, "No Time to Die" and "What Was I Made For?" She also picks up the love song craft, but with her own quirky twists.
A song about eternal love, "Birds of a Feather," sounds almost like it belongs at a wedding reception. With beautiful girl-group harmonies, steady but subtle pace, and puffy major chords, Eilish says, "I don't think I could love you more." Eilish's enduring morbid streak, however, becomes clear upon closer inspection: "I want you to stay till I'm in the grave/Till I rot away dead and buried."
With handclaps and a thumping beat, Eilish is even more poppier and happier in "Lunch," when she sings of falling in love with a girl and says, "She dances on my tongue/Tastes like she might be the one."
Of course, Eilish acknowledges the drawbacks of love as well. The singer puts on a brave front in "The Greatest," even if the person she is in love with ignores and rejects her. Over a pizzicato string quartet arrangement, she sings patiently and quietly until the very end, when she bursts into flame. She croons, "All the times I waited for you to want me naked," with a heartbreaking finish. "I am the greatest, man—I made it all look easy. The best ever!
Eilish finally acknowledges that her ex wasn't the love of her life in the caustic song "L'Amour de Ma Vie." She sings, "I told you a lie," with an unapologetic lilt, yet she still seems a little offended that "you moved on immediately." The track begins skeleton and torchy, then shifts into a subdued strut before radically changing: it begins with muted electronic noises, but suddenly explodes with a throbbing EDM beat and auto-tuned vocals, with Eilish mockingly stating, "You were so mediocre and we're so glad it's over now."
That marks the turn into the last, more experimental section of the album. The singer finds herself in a covert affair in the multipart "Bittersuite" — "I can't fall in love with you/No matter how bad I want to" — as her voice is gradually engulfed by eerie, shifty electronics.
Using lyrics from the other songs, "Blue" ties the album's themes together. "I'd like to mean it when I say I'm over you/But that's still not true," Eilish sings over oohing and ahing backup vocals in the catchy pop song that opens up about lost love. However, the song changes direction halfway through and becomes a spooky, glacial ballad about a person who was traumatized as a child: A siren wails softly in the background while Eilish croons, "I don't blame you/But I can't change you." A string quartet then takes over with a wordless melancholy towards the finish of the song.
Throughout that song and a significant portion of the album, Eilish puts aside simple pop pleasures and directs her attention toward people other than herself. She is utilizing the privileges of a superstar, which she has earned, on "Hit Me Hard and Soft."