When I finished my first listen of Billie Eilish’s new album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, I absolutely loved it. The instrumentation is great, the subject matter hits close to home, and the themes throughout are consistent and create a strong story. As I thought more about it though, I could not get the album out of my head. I thought there was more to explore, more to unpack, and more than I could get on a repeated listen.
So I went back and listened to it again, and again, and again. This album kept drawing me back in, making me want more, and every time, the album got better, and the plot of the album became more clear.
Opening up with “SKINNY,” Eilish delves into her insecurities. She discusses wanting to be better for the person she is in love with, but not feeling like she is enough. She desperately wants to feel loved, but also wants the old her to be loved too. The track doesn’t hit as hard as one may expect despite the subject. The instrumental is almost entirely a slow, soft guitar with some quiet bass behind it and violin at the end. She eases the listener into experience. She takes it slow and lets the listener soak in every slow word she says.
Seamlessly transitioning into “LUNCH,” Eilish delves into her jealousy and her unhealthy feelings for her mysterious “craving not a crush.” She wants to remain healthy and be the best version of her, but at the same time, desperately wants this person to love her.
The following track “CHIHIRO” is my absolute favorite track on the album for a multitude of reasons. The production, vocals, crescendos, and more are absolutely magnificent. Evenmoreso, I love how thought provoking it is. This song is where I feel like the album really becomes open to interpretation for the listener. From my understanding, Eilish talks about how she changed herself drastically to be with the person that she loves, but still gets rejected. The person that she loves leaves her and changes so much that they are unrecognizable, nowhere near the person that Billie fell for.
At this point I started to realize something. This album is very similar to “Igor” by Tyler, The Creator. It is not in a redundant way, but with heavy inspiration. Igor is an album about a man who wants to be with a man who is in a relationship, presumably with a woman. Igor goes through jealousy, love, hate, and eventually acceptance. Tyler and Billie are noted great friends in real life, so this inspiration is not surprising.
“BIRDS OF A FEATHER” comes next, in which Eilish talks about how no matter what, she will always love them. They need to be together no matter what, and repeats the line, “I’ll love you ‘til the day that I die.” It seems like a fitting wrap up song about acceptance, but this album only gets deeper and more complicated.
“WILDFLOWER” is where the album gets much more heart wrenching. It details how the person the Eilish loves has a girlfriend, or more accurately, had one. Eilish’s love interest and their girlfriend fell out of love and fell apart, leaving Eilish to pick up the pieces. Eilish comforted her interest’s girlfriend, letting her cry, breakdown, and detail all the horrors that she went through. It is then revealed that the interest left her girlfriend because they loved Eilish. She slowly sings out, “now I know that you love me, you don’t need to remind me, I should put it all behind me, shouldn’t I?” Eilish now has the opportunity to be with the person that she’s always loved, the one that she worked so hard to change for, but she struggles to take it. She says “I see her in the back of my mind, all the time.” She can’t get the thought of the person she helped out of her head. All Eilish sees is the pain that the interest’s girlfriend was subject to, the tears she shed, the nights she spent crying on Billie’s shoulders, as Eilish asks herself, in her lyrics “did I cross the line?”
In “THE GREATEST,” Eilish puts her concerns to the side, and finally dates the person she’s been fawning after the entire album so far, but nothing is right. Eilish is trying so hard to keep her love satisfied, but is getting nothing back. She wants just a sliver of what she is putting in, but she just feels like a convenience. She worked so hard to be loved, changed herself, and put her worries aside, but the person she loves just does not care.
“L’AMOUR DE MA VIE,” simply translates to “love of my life” from French. Eilish says that her interest is in fact not the love of her life. She tried to be there for them, but never got anything back. She says, “you made it so hard, like I knew you would, thought I was depressed or losing my mind, my stomach upset almost all of the time, but after I left, it was obvious why.” She tried to pour herself into a relationship that drained her and treated her poorly and she never got anything out of it. Never got love, never got an apology, never got anything from the person she wanted to be with. Eilish reveals that her love interest’s ex-girlfriend from “WILDFLOWER” bonded with Billie over the fact that the interest was mediocre, and how much of a shame it was that it never worked out with Billie and the interest.
“THE DINER” turns into one of the darkest tracks in Eilish’s discography. Without even getting into the lyrics, the instrumental is haunting. The entire track feels slightly off key and staccato making it sharper and angrier. She also adds in a lot of abnormal musical elements to add to the unnerving sound. The addition of laughing in the background and soft creaking adds to the unhinged lyrics. Eilish completely loses her sense of sanity and becomes a crazed stalker of her now ex lover. She shows up at their house, claiming she’ll save them, begging them not to call the cops, but they do, sending her to jail. She writes letters, asks her lover to visit her in jail, all to no avail.
In the penultimate track “BITTERSUITE,” Billie recognizes her insanity. She wants to be in love with her interest, she wants to love them so badly, but she realizes that she can’t. She finally knows that the person that she loves is pushing her towards the brink of insanity, and that letting go is bittersweet, taking her to the final track.
Finally, in the heart wrenching “BLUE” Billie finally admits that she has been living her life with one of two solutions in mind: either she has to be with her interest, or she has to be completely over them. Finally, she comes to a compromise: a blue. She’s been lying to the interest and to herself. She loves them very deeply, but she cannot be with them. All she wanted was them, but she realizes how bad they are for each other. She doesn’t hate them, she wishes them the best, and Billie is horribly depressed. But she does what is best, she realizes the difficulties of being in a relationship, and she starts the process of moving on.
This album has so much depth to it and even after listening to this album probably a dozen times, and writing this article, there is definitely more that I missed. I love this album because I feel like there is so much interpretation to this album, and everyone can get a different perspective of it.
My strongest recommendation is to listen to it for yourself. It connects with people in such different ways, and such powerful emotions. If you don’t absolutely love it the first time, listen again, change your environment, listening style, etc. I can promise you that this album will be a slow burn, but will have you rethinking it every time.