Billie Eilish HIT ME HARD AND SOFT | We will still talk about the album in 100 years

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is the third studio album from American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish, following ‘Happier Than Ever’ released in 2021 and the album that instantly made her a star, ‘WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?‘, in 2019.

As with the previous albums Eilish composed the entire album alongside her brother and famous product Finneas. They did it in a small studio that he has in his home, in a similar way to how they created the first one.

• Billie doesn’t like classic recording studios, so she always records her songs with a standard handheld microphone and usually sitting in an armchair.
• For the first time in Billie Eilish’s career she decided to incorporate string sections recorded by a 6-piece orchestra called the ‘Attacca Quartet’ on several tracks of HIT ME HARD AND SOFT.
• Billie recorded every verse of every song hundreds of times in the studio to make sure they sounded exactly the way she wanted them to.

The album topped the charts in over 20 countries, with all 10 of its songs being in the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100. In addition, on the day of its release, ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ received 72.7 million streams on Spotify 🎧 worldwide, making it her biggest debut on the platform.

• The album artwork, which shows Eilish falling through a door frame into dark blue water was taken during a 6-hour session that Billie called one of the most painful experiences of her life.

Billie Eilish did not release any singles to promote the album because she feels the album makes much more sense as a whole and wanted her audience to hear it in its entirety. Here’s why:

1. Skinny: A totally personal track that talks about how weird everything was for Billie at one time in her life and how to love your old self because it’s the one that brought you to your current place.

With a whispered voice, a wonderful melody and a grandiose subtlety ‘Skinny’ is a must-have song, an ode to music whose final chords connect to the next song….

2. Lunch: The song is about taking control over your life, full of phrases in which Billie and her brother were trying to give a touch of humor to the vulnerability and the desire to give everything to another person for whom you have lost your mind.

The backstory is Eilish’s sexuality, who has already confirmed that she likes both men and women. In the lyrics she describes her sexual appetite for a girl. Billie started writing ‘Lunch’ before her first sexual relationship with a woman and finished it afterwards. With a roll that is crazy ‘Lunch’ invites you to dance in pure Eilish style while you ogle that person you’ve snuck up on. The end of the track will freak you out 🤩.

3. Chihiro: A track in which Billie let herself go improvising over a base that her brother was playing with the idea of making it 100% danceable, in fact you can notice it in the base with techno touches.

With the idea to let go and enjoy ‘Chihiro’ takes us on a 5 minute musical journey that has been shortened. Special attention to Eilish’s voice every time she sings “Me”, and to the masterful production that we can only classify as masterful.

4. Birds of a Feather: Our favorite track from HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, and that’s saying a lot in a work like this. A pop song in which Billie said that vocally she has reached the highest note she has ever sung in her life.

I really can’t get over this song, it makes my hair stand up all over my body. A huge love song with an enormous amount of nuances, like the sound she incorporates in the last 30 seconds, WOW! By the way, the title comes from the saying ‘Birds of a feather flock together’ which in Spanish means ‘Dios los cría y ellos se juntan’. Specifically the expression ‘birds of a feather’ refers to people who have the same way of being, with common interests and values, i.e. birds of a feather.

5. Wildflower: This song expresses a sincere feeling that everyone can have and that is that even though you are with someone and you know that person loves you, you can fall in love with someone else, and when that happens, you can’t get it out of your head.

The way Billie sings the first line of the chorus ‘I see her in the back of my mind‘ takes you apart, and then continues ‘like a fever, like I’m burning alive‘ confessing how she can’t fight the continuous thought of the other person.

6. The Greatest: Billie said that this song is the heart of the album 🫀. She wrote it, like all the tracks, with her brother Finneas expressing the feeling of loving another person desperately but not being reciprocated in the same way.

The Greatest has one of the best bridges in Eilish’s discography, back around minute 3:00 she changes the pace completely, Billie raises the pitch and screams to her partner: I just wanted him to love me like I love you!

7. L’Amour de Ma Vie: ‘The love of my life’ is brutal, a song that becomes more and more cruel in the lyrics as it progresses, surprising with a radical change of pace past the middle of the song, taking us to a dance club where we let ourselves go uncontrollably.
8. The Diner: Another musical twist, which retains the Eilish style, but with a crime movie style that takes place in a brothel.
9. Bittersuite: The track starts with a strong synth and an even stronger sentence ‘I can’t fall in love with you’. Feelings can’t be forced and no matter how much you appreciate a person, if you’re not in love, you’re not in love.

Like most of Billie’s tracks, it has a song or songs within the song itself, as if the character in her song is set to sing a different theme, in this case, of a bestial sexual relationship that brings us to a finale where the music is so loud and Eilish’s ecstasy so great that you can barely hear it when she sings. Masterful production.

10. Blue: The first part of the song is a track Billie and her brother Finneas wrote when she was 14 called ‘True Blue’. They never released it but it leaked in 2022 and started playing on social media. That made Eilish reconnect with the track.

To complete ‘Blue’ they took another discarded track from the artist’s second album, called ‘Born Blue’, which they used for the second and saddest part of the song, linking it with some strings taken from the album’s first track ‘Skinny’, closing the virtuosic circle of ‘HIT ME HARD AND SOFT’ with the same melody that is used as a leitmotif throughout the album to unite the tracks and give more cohesion to the album. The melody can be heard in ‘Skinny’, ‘The Greatest’ and in the final part of ‘Bittersuite’.

And all this done by a 22 year old girl and her 26 year old brother, mind-blowing! The album ends with the phrase:

But, when can I hear the next one?

Will there be a sequel soon? We are certainly looking forward to more.