Billie Eilish has been teasing her latest full-length studio album for the last couple months. From changing all of her social media profiles to a vibrant cobalt blue to projections on the Louvre Art Museum in Paris, music fans all over have long been waiting to hear HIT ME HARD AND SOFT.
On May 17th, Billie’s album was released. The album consisted of 10 tracks, and had a total run time of 43:45. Lunch was the only single off of this album, and was released on the same date as the rest. Let’s take a look at each of the tracks!
SKINNY
The song starts with a soft and dreamy guitar riff. Billie’s iconic falsetto vocals come with it. You can immediately tell that this album is very personal. This song explores the media’s understanding of her life and emotions versus her own experience with them, with rhetorical questions such as the media asking her “Do you still cry?” and asking herself if she is “acting her age now”. She shows this disparity in the media vs. her own experience by directly saying that everyone assumes that she is now happy because she is skinny. She ends the song by remarking that she never did anything wrong, and it is our responsibility to understand the boundaries of celebrity and fan. The song closes with a violin solo that mimics the melodies throughout the song.
LUNCH
Lunch, the lead single of the album, is the audience’s first introduction to the queer themes throughout the album. The dance beat percussion combined with what I like to call the “cowboy guitar chords” make the song feel old and nostalgic. This is definitely an explicit song. It is fun as a fellow queer person to hear music about queer people, as much of the mainstream music we hear reflects the heteronormative nature of our culture. The lyrics are witty, and the dance vibe makes this song fun to listen and vibe to.
CHIHIRO
The song Chihiro is an allusion to Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away film. In this film, the main character Chihiro is moving to a new home. After she moves, her parents and her explore the town. Her parents are greedy and eat too much and get turned into pigs. While frightened, Chihiro runs away and finds herself at a spa/bath house for spirits. While working here, Chihiro loses her name and has to discover how to escape and find her family again. The film explores the themes of identity and what a home means. Billie’s song named after this character, explores her experience with heartbreak and trying to find yourself when you have lost something or someone that you love. The muffled drum beats with lofi production combines with Billie’s falsetto and mumble rap singing to inspire a nostalgic atmosphere to the song. Chihiro by Billie Eilish really gives off Lofi-Girl vibes with this song.
BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Birds of a feather begins with a synth beat and Billie’s falsetto vocals in the front of the production. Her vocals soon shift to a belt as she confesses her love to an unnamed person. In my opinion this seems like a confession of platonic love. She sings about going through a hard time with this person, but this person was always there for her. A ticking clock in the pre-chorus builds tension until the chorus explodes with atmospheric synths and layered vocals. A smooth synth that sounds vaguely sampled from a 2010s edm track closes the song.
WILDFLOWER
The song begins with a slowly strummed guitar and soft falsettos, immediately signaling that this song will be a Billie Ballad. This song explores Billie’s guilt of dating a friend’s ex. Billie is confused on how she should feel, as she is in love with the person she is dating, but doesn’t want to make her friend mad or betray them. This song is a great example of production crescendo, as the instrumentals slowly build throughout the song, until it sounds chaotic and overwhelming towards the end.
THE GREATEST
The Greatest by Billie Eilish is a confession of all of the effort that she put into a relationship without getting anything in return. Her sarcastic chorus of stating all of the ways that she was “the greatest” builds into sharp belts, before she solemnly transitions into soft vocals. The finger-plucked guitar throughout the entire song leaves the production rather raw, so her vocals really shine on this track. In the bridge, the sound explodes as Billie shouts all of the things she wanted back from her partner.
L’AMOUR DE MA VIE
This is definitely my favorite song on the album. L’amour De Ma Vie’s cheeky melody and lyrics begin the song. It at first sounds like a Laufey song, as she smoothly singly a doo-wop jazzy melody. She asks her past lover countless questions of what she could’ve done more. As the beat drops, Billie continues with the similar melody, expressing that her past lover wasn’t truly the love of her life. Plinky pianos sparkle in the background, as Billie call-and-response sings the lyrics back to herself. Then… the song changes. (As many of you may not know, but I am a big hyperpop fan) The high-pitched autotune of the same lyrics signal a transition as a deep throbbing emerges, and synths take over the forefront of the production. Now, this song seems to enter 100 Gecs territory. The autotune continues to mask Billie’s vocals, and as she sings the vocals seem to blend into the layered synths. I love how this track feels like two separate songs combined into one.
A week later, Billie dropped a remix song. Which was an extended version of L’amour De Ma Vie, but was only the hyperpop half. I love when mainstream artists do creative things with their music, and Billie really hit the ball out of the park with this one.
THE DINER
This song begins, and it sounds a little familiar. Dare I say, it sounds like the Wii music? The Diner begins with deep synths. Billie’s vocals are mixed very similarly to how they were on “When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?”. This song is Billie professing her love to a girl, and hoping that the girl will say yes. The production is rather repetitive, but it is a great callback to her earlier music. The song ends with Billie whispering a phone number. Are you brave enough to call it?
BITTERSUITE
Bittersuite begins with buzzing synths as soft vocals. As Billie sings, driving synths fill the background. It is very apparent that Billie has been pulling a lot of inspiration from edm music the the mid-2010s in her production on this album. The Wii music comes back on this track, again. This track is overall kind of underwhelming, but it is a good way to wrap up the back half of the album. The ending leads into the next track, Blue.
BLUE
This track, again, feels like it pulls a lot of inspiration from 2010s edm. Billie’s vocals fluctuate filling the background. This track really is a great example of pulling the whole album together. Her vocals are very strong on this track, and the buzzy background synths compliment the more ballad style song that this is. However, about 2 minutes in, the tempo changes and switches to become a piano ballad. Billie sings to herself, and wishes herself good luck on her next adventures, as the album closes. About 3:30 minutes in, the vocals become distorted and poppy synths overwhelm the piano to transition back to a more upbeat tempo than the last minute and a half. As the song starts to slow down, the album starts to sink in. The album switched from ballad, to dance pop, to hyperpop, and back again. I think this track really reflects Billie’s versatility in songwriting and as a musician and singer. As always, big props toe Finneas for the production on both this song and the whole album.
In all, this album really exemplifies the great aspects of modern pop music. All of the tracks feel long and flushed out. There is space for each of them to breathe, as there are only 10 songs on the album. The production was varied and interesting, but there still seemed to be an overall theme of identity and finding yourself. I really hope you check this album out. I am definitely not a Billie stan, but I recommend giving this one a listen.
Hannah’s Ranking:
1. L’Amour De Ma Vie
2. Birds of a Feather
3. Blue
4. Chihiro
5. Wildflower
6. Lunch
7. Skinny
8. The Diner
9. Bittersuite
10. The Greatest
Overall Rating:
Strong 8/10!
