End of Year Review: “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT”
Billie Eilish’s third studio album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, is so exquisitely laid out that it was declared a pop masterpiece immediately upon release (by me). By the end of the year, no other album had topped it. So, here I present to you a deep dive into my favorite album of 2024 and whether or not “WILDFLOWER” still makes me cry. Spoiler, it does.
When I first listened to don’t smile at me, I was seventeen. At that age I had had very little experience with romantic relationships, money, real world dilemmas, etc. I knew my town, my school, my friends, and the same musical artists I’d been listening to since I was thirteen. My Spotify was basically begging me to listen to anything other than radio pop, and while Billie was very much still pop, that first EP was different. The only way to describe don’t smile at me is to remind you what it feels like to be told a captivating bedtime story. The production was uniquely homemade, the layered vocals that are so quintessential Billie now were only just getting started. Every time I pressed play it felt like I was gossiping with friends. It was a truly remarkable project coming from a then fifteen year old, but seven years later, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT makes it obvious that all those songs were were stories.
At the time that I’m writing this, I’m twenty-four years old. I’ve lived far more life in the last seven years than I had in those first seventeen, and so, it seems, has Billie. This latest album is not just another remarkable project by a young artist, it’s a tell all, the closest we’ll ever get to being in her head. It’s not just the lyrics, it’s the production, the arrangement, the use of musical motifs. This album is the final stage in a very visible evolution of sound and personal investment. HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is a landscape of growth, mentally and musically, and it’s truly thrilling to see it so well executed.
The album starts with Billie waving a white flag in “SKINNY”. Having recently gone through a very publicly ridiculed relationship, she makes it clear that she wasn’t impervious to the criticisms that were generously thrown her way. In fact she hears everything the public has to say about her, be it about who she’s dating, what gender she’s admiring at the moment, or what she’s hiding under her clothes. She’s happy in her own skin, that’s clear, but she uses this song to take a moment to really find herself in the chaos, admiring every version of herself and how she’s handled all that has been thrown her way. It’s a very personal moment that lets the audience know they’re getting the most honest version of Billie yet.
This openness continues on tracks like “LUNCH” and “THE DINER”, two of the instances in which Billie refers to women as romantic partners for the first time in her music. It’s relieving to see her express herself so freely and creatively despite having this piece of her basically forced out into the open due to public demand. (I’d like to personally say fuck you to anyone who applies the term “queerbaiting” to real people who shouldn’t be forced to share their sexuality. I’d also like to personally thank Billie for the phrase “do you know how to bend?”) Production wise, these are a couple of the more fun, upbeat tracks in an album full of hard lessons. If you’ve ever wanted a good pregaming song about stalking or cunnilingus, she is your girl.
Speaking of motifs, “SKINNY” ends with an instrumental that is heard several more times throughout the rest of the album. “THE GREATEST” is a sardonic, people pleasing anthem about giving everything in a relationship and receiving the bare minimum in return. On this track she finds herself losing her grip on a relationship she has already put her all into. She’s always there when needed, she lets them do their own thing, she’s the greatest. You can practically see her partner condescendingly putting their hand on her shoulder as they say it. The song is a passionate pop rock interpretation of what it feels like to scream into your pillow when frustrated over a guy. The specific section that is woven into the album from beginning to end is the couple of bars where Billie states “I loved you / and I still do / just wanted passion from you / just wanted what I gave you / I waited / and waited.” This repetition represents one of the main concepts of the album: fully investing in something that isn’t quite what it should be. “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” sees Billie holding tight to a love that has already left; in “WILDFLOWER” she struggles with loving someone but knowing that her actions are hurting another; she plays the part of a crazed stalked in “THE DINER”, in love with someone who doesn’t even know she exists; while not fully invested, she’s released from a deadbeat relationship in “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE”; “BLUE” shows that despite accepting the events that shaped her ex and knowing there isn’t anything she can fix, she still yearns for that relationship. Billie has not just taken a couple of chords and put them all willy-nilly around the record, rather she’s orchestrated a coherent reflection of what it is to continue to feel as though you’re losing someone long after the person has left.
But perhaps the ultimate reason that HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is my favorite project that came out this year is that while there are still remnants of her sound from prior albums, there is so much more of herself invested in the lyrics and vocal execution. Going back and listening to songs like “hostage” and “my boy” after hearing this album, they’re fun and pretty but they’re also so empty. It feels weird to hear so little emotion in her voice after listening to something as beautiful as “SKINNY”. And I think this all comes down to the fact that she’s actually singing her own experiences now, and she fully embodies and understands the pain that her lyrics emphasize. You do see this in some earlier songs like “i love you” and “when the party’s over” off of her debut album, but every single track on this most recent project screams “I LIVED THIS LIFE.” “BLUE” itself is a reworked version of two unreleased songs from earlier years that she not only managed to finish beautifully, but that so fulfills the purpose of the album you would never know it was meant to exist anywhere else. She’s taken these old ideas birthed over the years and infused a whole new life into them to the point that there’s simply this album and then everything from before that led to its creation.
Pop music had a lot of entries on the charts this year, but it’s my opinion that nothing ever really came close to touching HIT ME HARD IN SOFT in terms of creativity, musicality, storytelling, etc. What Billie is doing is so successful because she presents herself in such an authentic way that it rubs off on the art she produces. If everyone in the industry took care to create the kind of stuff that makes them happy to be creating, that they themselves want to hear, perhaps it wouldn’t be so shocking to see a gem like this come from someone so big. Basically, life can be hard to live, but boy does it pay off to be able to experience and channel and share.