In her third album, the singer frees herself from other constraints and is willing to remain at the forefront of pop music, even if her heart is broken.
Billie Eilish He has been performing in front of audiences since he was 18 years old. Before that, the stage was her room, shared with her brother and producer. Finneaswhile he refines songs that torment the dreams of young North American teenagers, between insecurities about who they want to be when they grow up, aesthetic pressures and the social life of generation Z, fluid, liquid, even dried up.
The experience of emerging from the darkness of the room and being thrust into the biggest pop spotlight in years by a tong was, as expected, violent. Billie sense. If a forty-year-old could feel this, imagine a person in their late teens, enduring the pressure of fame.
This is the first feeling from which she, at 22, begins to free herself Hit me hard and softthe third album of a dazzling career, with a list of awards that includes 9 Grammy gramophones and two Oscar statuettes (not bad, right?).
Although she was an undiscovered artist before 2017, with only one hit (the sad Eyes of the ocean), the album that changed everything, the debut with We all fall asleep, where are we going?transformed Billie into an icon of fashion and pop. The avant-garde of dance music and fashion suddenly coalesced around the young woman with white skin, light eyes, hair bleached and dyed with radioactive colors, in that parasitic way, like a vampire leech.
Billie survived the chaos. She hugged him as he toured the world with a dark record, which brought his greatest nightmares to life, with dense, slow and sonorous bass, with aesthetic details that seemed to come out of Tim Burton’s nightmares and from the world of Beetlejuice, from the film Ghosts have fun.
In the second album, Billie she tried so hard to say it was okay that it was clear, but she still wasn’t. Who would she be? At 20 she did what a post-young person does, she wanted to shock, celebrate. She changed everything: she left the darkness and called upon a golden light whose brightness should try to ignore the most intimate matters. Gone were the electronic rhythms and in came Bossanovian ballads. Intimate, yes, with his fingers in some very sensitive wounds regarding his journey into the music business and abusive relationships.
Therefore, this is to be expected Hit me hard and soft if the emancipation of Billie Eilish. Here, she is Finneas they are free to experiment, while Billie feel brave enough to break your heart (and your innermost desires).
Skinnythe first song of the album, seems to create the bridge between the second and third album, with a plucked guitar and the ethereal voice of Billie flying over. “People say I seem happy because I lost weight”, reads an excerpt of the lyrics directly linked to the previous phase, from the album whose title was, in free translation, “happier than ever”. In the images of the time, in addition to the gold, the artist highlighted her skin more.
In this same song, Billie Eilish leaves behind the topic that tormented her (the caged bird) to feel free, once and for all, to face her sexuality. In another verse, she the artist declares, “I think she’s beautiful.”
More of this theme follows, when the guitar ballad is swapped for a ball gown, like robotic ska. In Lunchwhich is the English word for lunch, Billie he explains that he’s not hungry, but rather horny: “I could have lunch with that girl,” he says Billie. An interesting piece of information is that Billie Eilish’s mother reportedly remained silent for long minutes after specifically listening to this song.
Leaving modesty behind, Billie Eilish had revealed, in interviews, how comfortable she was with her tastes and sexuality. Hit me hard and soft it is also a sexual title: hit me hard and soft or slow, in this movement of affective masochism developed in each of the other tracks. It literally bites and blows, heating and cooling temperatures, with reasonable control.
Billie You discover yourself loving, finally. And it hurts, as we know. Chihirostarting as Japanese lo-fi, it develops into a chorus of falsettos and electronic rhythms. Billie loneliness sings. Like a diary, it verbally recounts a lack of love. “Do you open this door?” she asks. And he didn’t open up.
“I want you to stay,” he insists once again, now inside Birds of a featherone of the album’s most colorful songs, with ’80s inspirations, started out as a soft rock ballad that could get airplay on adult contemporary radio stations, alongside Fleetwood Mac, Eagles and Paul Simon.
You can hear the embodiment in the lyrics Billie and in his brother, with an increasingly bold and less caricatured production. Hit me hard and soft escape the traps. The voice of BillieI guess, it could go up a notch, losing the foggy air with egos and fades, which might cause some weirdness for millennials who, unlike Billie Eilish’s Generation Z, have trouble understanding the nuances of production and try to find the repetitive album.
This is the big dilemma of the third album Billie. Gen Z cheered it, millennials were annoyed (calm down, there are exceptions on both sides), while Gen X pretended to like it just to feel like they fit in with young TikTokers.
The truth Hit me hard and soft shines on first listen, as in the aforementioned Birds of a featherin the desperate (and fantastic) ballad. The biggest and the deliberately high volume of L’Amour De Ma Viebut it can also seem more horizontal on a quick listen than the roller coaster of sung sentiments Billie can suggest. In this, the first album full of Billie it was more challenging, weird and punk, due to the originality of the brothers’ aesthetic.
That’s the impression Billie AND Finneas create an Alpha FM for Generation Z, with romantic songs about love, pain, loneliness and desperation, in allusion to the radio station dedicated to late-night romantic songs. As if they tuned in to different artists and channeled different feelings and sounds.
The Greatest, so beautiful that it deserves a separate paragraph, is the culmination of the work, the sixth song of the 11. In it, Billie he is in pieces due to a heart mismatch. She sings with unprecedented intensity, as if she physically needed to tear that shadow of her heart from her vocal chords.
After this track, the album loses focus and the brothers play more, as expected from a b-side. The Dinner is a darker sonic carousel (like a holdover from the first album), followed by Bitter suite, whose superpop noises of the first seconds are replaced by echoes and minimalism. “I have to be careful,” she sings, “because I can’t fall in love with you, as much as I want to.”
Freed, Billie comes to the end of her third album lighter than she began. The cover, sunk in the water, gives the sensation of immersion. Under water the weight decreases.
Billie Eilish is ready to conquer the world once again. Now, much freer, out of some cages: I can’t guarantee that everyone is free.
Source: Terra
Earl Johnson is a music writer at Gossipify, known for his in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the industry. A graduate of USC with a degree in Music, he brings years of experience and passion to his writing. He covers the latest releases and trends, always on the lookout for the next big thing in music.
