Living Up to its Name, Hit Me Hard and Soft Doesn’t Pull Punches

After bursting onto the pop scene seemingly out of nowhere, Billie Eilish has racked up accolade after accolade. After surging into the public eye with her debut Soundcloud single, “Ocean Eyes”, she became the first artist born in this millennium to score a number-one hit, then went on to win two academy awards for soundtracking two of the biggest franchises of the past seventy years: James Bond and Barbie. It is no surprise, then, that her third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, shot to the top of the charts around the world (though was conspicuously blocked from the top spot in the US by several hastily-released variants of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets’ Department). But can the album—by nature a collection of tracks, instead of the artfully selected single that graced the Academy Awards—live up to such roaring successes?

In many ways, the album is classic Eilish: she neatly sets all her ducks in a row with the first few tracks, creating continuations (some would say copies) of previous hits to tick off and shoot down. “Skinny”, the opener, is a ballad detailing Eilish's insecurities that tonally, thematically, and sonically is a clear sequel to her Oscar-winning "What Was I Made For?". "Chihiro"'s dreamy bedroom pop is a callback to her breakout "Ocean Eyes", and "The Diner" is "Bad Guy"'s successor, with muted power vocals and sudden cutoffs segueing into an electronic buildup. This isn’t a bad thing by any means: Eilish fans will delight in more of her signature sound, and casual listeners piqued by their trips to the cinema will be pleased to find more of the same to whet their whistle.

Much of the album’s punch is found in its oscillation between extremes. Hit Me Hard and Soft is an apt title: there are few better ways to describe an album that alternates between metallic pop and lonely-sounding piano ballads. The majority of the album treads on the softer side sonically, appealing perhaps to Eilish’s recent Oscar successes, but the content of these songs goes for the gut punch. "Wildflower", "The Greatest", and "L'Amour de Ma Vie" make a scathing three-track run of lovers expecting—and demanding—different degrees of devotion from their partners. Classic pop features of longing, regret, and jealousy towards ex-partners pepper these tracks liberally, creating a suffocating feeling of dread and despair that’s only heightened by sudden turns to electronic production towards the end of “Blue” and “L’Amour de Ma Vie”. “Ocean Eyes” was an apt name for Eilish’s debut, as is the dreamlike quality of the sinking Eilish that graces the album’s cover: these tracks make the listener feel as if they’re underwater, inexorably dragged away from the bright life of the surface.

The remaining songs on the album--a handful of moody electronic pop with the dead-pan delivery and synthetic backing tracks that made "Bad Guy '' such a hit—from the opposite end of the scale: sonically hard and lyrically soft. This collection of more upbeat songs are focused on acquiring a girl—it’s a good time to be a lesbian in Eilish’s world, and everyone else is along for the ride. “Lunch” is clearly the standout: after a long run of leaks and sneak performances, this is a fun track about getting stuck dumb by a crush—‘she’s the headlights, I’m the deer’ is a standout lyric—and the joys of oral sex. It’s destined to be a hit at parties and worm its way onto queer playlists next to Girl in Red and Chappell Roan. Yet there can lie a deep undertone of desperation to these tracks: Eilish perfects her muted wail in “The Diner '', a track which becomes far more disturbing as repeat listens reveal it to scrape the recesses of a stalker’s mind. Meanwhile, ‘Birds of a Feather’s'' backing tracks are bright and cheery, soaring like their title with light, airy vocals and breezy strings, yet the lyrics petitioning a lover to stay veer with alarming alacrity into the morbid: ‘I want you to stay[…]’til I rot away’ sings Eilish in the opening verse. These songs make perfectly delightful soundtracks to a sunny afternoon, yet allow the listener to engage more deeply with the subjects tackled should they choose to listen.

Hit Me Hard and Soft is a safe album: it plays neatly to Eilish’s strengths while appealing to all of her core demographics in turn. It satisfies the Oscar-lovers with a share of moody ballads and plays with production in tracks that seem irrevocably destined for singles. There are some surprises—sudden twists in production make the finales of certain tracks fascinating exercises in just how squeaky a metronome can be—and the length of the album (only ten tracks—practically an EP) is enough to keep casual listeners engaged and ensures the quality remains high throughout (Beyonce and Taylor Swift could perhaps take a leaf out of Eilish’s book). For Eilish fans and the general public alike, Hit Me Hard and Soft is a solid summer staple that delivers more Billie Eilish to our ears.