Music review: Billie Eilish’s ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ is zealous underdog pop in a league of its own

“Am I acting my age now?” Billie Eilish22, wonders out loud on the opening track of his ambitious third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”

“Am I on my way out yet?” »

This 10-track album sees a one-of-a-kind pop artist once again rewrite the rules: If Eilish’s first album introduced the world to her brilliant horror pop, with its macabre humor, offbeat rhythms and teenage Invisalign slurps, and his second After wiping away those black tears for pop-singing, bossa nova ruminations on expectations of fame, his third is an amalgamation of the two, with some daring new surprises.

“Hit Me Hard and Soft” proves that Eilish is an outsider in contemporary pop in many ways: it’s an album meant to be heard and appreciated fully, going against the current monocentric model of the music industry. And she deserves this distinction, with a more complete sound, thanks to her brother, producer and collaborator Finneas O’Connellnow joined by Andrew Marshall on drums and the Attacca Quartet on strings.

Opener “Skinny” launches into the sweet falsetto of his award-winning Ballad “Barbie” “What was I made for? The song’s message also has a similar type of resonance – she addresses body image by singing “People say I look happy / Just ’cause I got skinny” – echoing her short film and to his spoken word interlude “Not My Responsibility” from 2021’s “Happier.” Than ever.

A string section carries “Skinny” through its coda, recalling Eilish’s rendition of her song “Barbie” at the 2024 Oscarswhere she was joined by an orchestra.

From that moment on, everything changes. False outs define “Hit Me Hard and Soft”. Do you think a song goes in one direction? Guess again.

In the final five seconds of “Skinny,” pulsing drums enter the equation, a rhythm that carries over into the sapphic anthem “Lunch” – a future fan favorite.

Then there’s the languid bass and airy chorus of “far from me” on the midtempo “Spirited Away,” presumably named after the 10-year-old protagonist in Hayao Miyazaki’s film. Studio Ghibli classic, “Spirited Away.” This song, like many others on the album, starts soft and ends strong. An erotic crescendo of hard-hitting techno-house reached “Challengers” level of auditory exaltation.

“The Greatest” could be considered a thematic sequel to “Everything I Wanted” from his 2019 album, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” now with a spunky nylon string guitar. After three and a half minutes, it turns into atmospheric arena rock. The blown guitars are executed in a way that sounds familiar to 2021’s title track, “Happier Than Ever.”

The deceptively happy sound of “L’amour De Ma Vie” is also true to the kind of jazzy, loungey moments of his last album. “But I must confess / I told you a lie,” the light-eyed Eilish sings. “I said you/you were the love of my life.”

Later, the song ascends into synth-pop bliss – distorted, auto-tuned vocals in a hyperpopEurodance rave – let no one forget that this is the same pop artist who wrote the industrial track “Oxytocin”.

So where did the “Bad boy” is the singer okay? “The Diner,” duh. Here, the haunted sound of his carnival returns. “Don’t be afraid of me,” she opens her gothic vaudeville (now an order rather than the “Why aren’t you afraid of me?” question of 2019’s “Bury a Friend”). She teases, “I bet I could change your life/You could be my wife.”

Where other artists might draw inspiration from their past to create derivative, impressionistic portraits of who they were, Eilish evolves her ghosts.

That’s true in the “Blue,” a sonic reminder of Eilish’s long love of Lana Del Rey records, until he takes a Massive Attack-style trip-hop DETOUR. Two things can be true – and blue – at once.

“Hit Me Hard and Soft” is the strongest Eilish has ever recorded – no longer singing almost exclusively in beautiful, hushed tones just above an ASMR whisper, buried beneath sweeping, innovative production. Clearly, she has gained the confidence to stand out.

The only skip might be the penultimate track “Bittersuite,” which suffers from its own subtlety – something she manages to avoid on the largely acoustic “Wildflower.” There, its sonic smoothness merges after a crisp drum fill somewhere in the middle. It’s discreet, but effective. Lyrically, Eilish details a concern about a current partner’s former lover: “Every time you touch me,” she sings. “I just wonder how she feels.”

Throughout the album, Eilish is a bird: she is a caged bird in “Skinny”; she wants to stay together on the baroque pop track “Birds of a Feather”, and as the album gets closer “Blue”, she realizes that they weren’t “birds of a feather”, after everything – and she’s back in a cage.

It’s a welcome change from the tarantulas that defined “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” “, but it also serves as the perfect metaphor for Eilish’s third album. She is motivated by a desire for freedom. And on “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” she allowed herself to communicate the tension – and let it take flight.