HIT ME HARDER!! (Billie Eilish Album Review)
Okay I have been putting off posting on this because I was trying to do a Tortured Poets Dept review and it just wasn’t flowing. Sorry to everyone I advertised this to and then proceeded to not post for over a month…I’ll save TTPD for another week and talk at you about an album that has been playing non-stop since its release: HIT ME HARD AND SOFT by Billie Eilish.
This album is fresh. It’s new. It’s the album I’ve been waiting for that some albums couldn’t live up to…cough cough TTPD. Anyway, let’s get into it!
Vocals
This album is extremely fresh and addictive to me because of Billie’s vocals!! Billie Eilish is a singer that consistently put out songs that mostly used whisper singing, a fine technique when artistically used and in moderation, but her talk-singing/whispering was starting to get old. For example, her sophomore album Happier than Ever was a hit, but many songs included this technique which lost my interest. The only song that really stuck for me was the title track, Happier than Ever, in which she starts softly, the beat changes, and then she starts to get into her chest and belt (stronger, louder vocals). In a way, that song might’ve been a teaser for her HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, in which she finally shows off the vocal work she’s been doing the past few years. I am SO impressed by her singing. For example, comparing one of her earliest hits Ocean Eyes, with a song like The Greatest, you’ll really see the difference. And her whispering isn’t absent from this album, but it feels far more tasteful and used as a tool to provide dynamic movement and convey vulnerability.
Music
AHHHHH I just love it all so much.
The album starts with slower song SKINNY, a beautiful, echoing song where she sings quieter, but goes into a stronger voice at different parts. This song’s chorus reminisces Madison Beer’s Selfish chorus for me personally, and discusses her relationship with fame and relationships and is lush with lush harmonies, soft vocal runs, and an orchestral outro echoing future melodies in the album. This makes a perfect opener, conveying such a sense of melancholy.
Immediately following is LUNCH, the first song Billie has written about her queerness. LUNCH is an upbeat song with a strong beat and fun guitars. Vocally nothing crazy but Finneas keeps it interesting. I love the ending, where the bass comes out strong and clips of breaths are mixed into the beat.
CHIHIRO is the third track on the album, whose lyrical content is based on the film Spirited Away, which focuses on a character named Chihiro. This song, running at 5 minutes and 3 seconds, features no real structure. There’s a quieter beginning with a strong beat and gentle lyrics, then a sort of explosion into a sort of chorus where she’s belting, but the beat is even louder, creating a thrilling effect. Then, she goes into a softer beat with new lyrics and melody, which grows into the same beat as the chorus from earlier. Overall, the song is very creative, haunting, and echoic. If I was more familiar with Spirited Away, I might be more drawn to it.
The fourth song is my absolute favorite, BIRDS OF A FEATHER. This is an absolute pop HIT, with an upbeat tempo, lush instrumentals, and gorgeous vocals. I can’t help but sway/bop to this song in the public library I’m currently writing this in. I found this song very vocally impressive, and sweet as well! Simply in love.
Fifth song is WILDFLOWER, my second favorite on the album. The song is a softer, melancholy song featuring mainly reverbed vocals and guitar. Haunting is a word I’d use to describe this song as well. She talks about “breaking girl code”, in an extremely poetic way, asking “did I cross the line?”. The melody is mysterious and dark, but truly gorgeous. The song features a sort of outro, and then a fade out and fade in of a reprise of the outro, which seems like a way to convey the inescapability of her thoughts. I’m obsessed. And will probably cover this soon.
Next, we have THE GREATEST, a song about her pressures to be the greatest, able to be interpreted from the perspective of a relationship, the public, or both. I love how this song grows, the start was a little slow for me but once I hit the climax, it’s incredible. Her vocals convey her struggles really well, and are overall very strong. Once we hit that peak, the song transitions into a complete release - a rock ballad that I NEED to hear in a stadium.
Seventh track L’AMOUR DE MA VIE, starts out with a humorously sung intro, almost similar to Laufey’s vocals, and then goes into an EDM banger. She goes into details of her ex’s manipulative tactics and her reflection on them. A great bitter breakup song!
Eighth is THE DINER, a creepy song from the perspective of a stalker and a potential “calm down” message to super fans. She sounds very creepy, the song’s production is creepy, creepy! In her own words, a very Billie Eilish song. Listen after watching Baby Reindeer for full effect.
Next is BITTERSUITE, a three movement song that I still haven’t fully grasped after countless listens over the past 2 weeks. We start out very cinematic, then go into a softer beat, then a beat switch and a fun lyrical zigzag pattern, and then finally into a darker beat that transitions directly into the final track, BLUE.
BLUE is a summation of all the songs, featuring lyrics which reference each track in a faster paced song, and then going into a beautiful, sad second part, which then turns into an EDM kind of movement. Finally, the song transitions into an orchestral version of THE GREATEST. I am amazed by this song.
As you may have noticed from the brief explanations of each song, Billie and Finneas have only a few songs that follow a traditional song structure, while most of them have interesting interludes, outros, or simply contain multiple movements over 4-5 minutes. I think this album is transformative for their sound, and will hopefully inspire different takes in pop music beyond the traditional verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure, which is great for beginner writers but can lose its charm over time.
Pop Patterns
Something Billie Eilish spoke out against is this epidemic of vinyl variants that artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift have began to really hone in on as a way to increase album sales numbers, but as Billie mentions, is destructive and hyper-capitalist. Artists approach this in different ways, whether its selling different colors, but lately artists like Taylor and Olivia have been selling vinyls that have exclusive songs on them, but different songs on different vinyls. For example, Olivia sold 4 versions that each had a different exclusive track, so in order to hear all 4, fans are forced to buy four or wait 6-9 months for them to hit streaming platforms.
Taylor sold 4 varients whose art formed a clock, which fans could then purchase a clock hand and holders to, to create their own clock.
This new pattern is truly excessive, no one actually needs more than one, but these attempts to sell more and gain more streams comes across as selfish from these artists. Yes creative, but do we really need to be contributing more waste and asking fans to pay even more money? Let me know what you think.
Other News
Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism was super fun! Definitely check it out. Gracie Abrams and Megan Trainor are both releasing in June, so I’ll be tuning in to see what they have to say. While I’m slightly anti-Gracie (her single Risk is so weird??), I’m interested to see how the Taylor feature song turns out.
Sorry for the long wait, I’m hoping to get back into it now that the chaos of graduating and vacationing abroad is over!