In the almost three full years since Billie Eilish released her sophomore album, Happier Than Ever, the world has only gotten a little more blurry, to put it euphemistically. Or maybe, the truth is, it’s fallen into sharper focus for being what it is: the type of place that makes someone like Eilish and the generation she’s part of an anxiety-ridden ball of nerves. Someone who spent a formative part of her last year as a teenager in lockdown. But it’s not only the pandemic that gave Gen Z its warped sense of time. There are many contributing factors, though, chiefly, being affixed to a screen for so much of one’s day. It’s hard to “make memories” that way—at least ones that will prove to be lasting in a way that marks, therefore differentiates time.
Among the screen’s many hazards, in fact, is that it causes all of time to kind of run together, with one day not really varying from the next. The only way to tell what’s different, really, is that one is looking at “new content.” The relativity (or lack thereof) of time to Gen Z seems worth bringing up in regard to Eilish’s third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft—mainly because she’s already talking about wanting to get back to “2019 me.” In other words, the girl who brought us When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? As though that person, that “era” was from so long ago. By the same token, there are many ways in which 2019 was a lifetime ago, not least of which is because it was the last year before Miss Rona took over and altered many people’s psychological framework for good. It seems that 2020 and beyond has caused some kind of chasm in the space-time continuum, wherein everything feels absurdly accelerated—life-altering world events now seeming to happen every few weeks as opposed to every few years.
So perhaps it’s no wonder that Eilish’s concept of time is much different from, say, a baby boomer’s. For example, Madonna didn’t want to return to her nineteen-year-old self/image until, what do you know, 2019. With Madame X, she decided it was time to return to that version of herself, the version that set the tone for who she would be for the rest of her career: the queen of reinvention. That’s why Martha Graham gave her the nickname “Madame X.” Per Madonna’s account, Graham told her, “I’m going to give you a new name: Madame X. Every day, you come to school and I don’t recognize you. Every day, you change your identity. You’re a mystery to me.”
Being a mystery was, at one point, Eilish’s key goal in life. It was part of what kept her so isolated and afraid to make herself known or open up to new people/potential friends (like Zoe Kravitz, for example). As Eilish put it in her latest Rolling Stone interview, “I used to be so obsessed with this mysteriousness, and I think that’s one hundred percent why I didn’t make any friends, because I didn’t want anyone to know me, because I wanted everyone to think of me as this mysterious, cool person. I loved the idea of people feeling that way, but then I thought, ‘Oh, here I am sitting alone in my room, loving the feeling that everybody thinks I’m really cool, but I’m not actually getting anything out of that. I’m not enjoying anything in my life at all.’” Besides, it’s obvious that her legions of fans will continue to think she’s “cool” no matter what she does—even when she cosplays as a goy toy pinup. That Happier Than Ever-aligned shoot for British Vogue retroactively coming across as Eilish’s last grand attempt at “playing it straight.” Of appealing to a cliched “male fantasy” (to use a phrase that serves as the final track’s title on Happier Than Ever). But it seems Eilish knows better now, has decided that the only fantasy she wants to fulfill are those of the sapphic variety (which itself is still a straight male fantasy).
Before Eilish has her big coming out moment (you know, apart from the forced one she had on the Variety red carpet), she “reintroduces” herself with Hit Me Hard and Soft’s opening track, “Skinny.” As it’s been pointed out, “Skinny” clearly shares the same DNA as Eilish’s sleeper hit of 2023, “What Was I Made For?” Indeed, “Skinny” was conceived before “What Was I Made For?,” serving as a launching pad for the latter. On it, Eilish laments the continued weight (pun intended) that society places on people’s bodies—more specifically, whether or not people’s bodies are “thin enough” (call it her more genuine take on Beyoncé’s “Pretty Hurts”).
Thus, Eilish melancholically sings, “People say I look happy/Just because I got skinny/But the old me is still me and maybe the real me/And I think she’s pretty.” So it is that Eilish establishes this motif of “getting back to herself,” the girl we recognized circa 2019. Eilish correspondingly noted, “This whole process has felt like I’m coming back to the girl that I was. I’ve been grieving her. I’ve been looking for her in everything, and it’s almost like she got drowned by the world and the media. I don’t remember when she went away.”
And, speaking of drowning, that is precisely the image Eilish goes for as her cover art for Hit Me Hard and Soft (stylized in all caps on certain streaming platforms…like her first album). Considering her fear of water as a child, shooting the underwater photos was a cathartic process in many ways (and yes, water imagery appears frequently in Eilish’s work, which is somewhat surprising considering she’s a fire sign). As for the title, no, it’s not meant to usurp the millennial phrase coined by Britney, “Hit me, baby, one more time,” but rather, it was a happy accident. Per Rolling Stone, “She mistakenly thought the name of a synth in Logic Pro was called ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft.’ ‘I thought it was such a perfect encapsulation of what this album does,” she explains. ‘It’s an impossible request: You can’t be hit hard and soft. You can’t do anything hard and soft at the same time. I’m a pretty extremist person, and I really like when things are really intense physically, but I also love when things are very tender and sweet. I want two things at once. So I thought that was a really good way to describe me, and I love that it’s not possible.’” Unless, of course, the hardness and softness is delivered alternatingly—as it is throughout the record.
As such, for those who might have gotten too comfortable with the slow-tempo, ethereal sound of “Skinny,” Finneas phrases it best when he says, “If you’re remembering ‘What Was I Made For?’ and then you hear [it], you go, ‘Oh, okay. I understand this world.’ Then the drums come in [on “Lunch”], and it really is the kill-the-main-character-type beat. It’s like Drew Barrymore being in the first five minutes of Scream and then they kill her. You’re like, ‘They can’t kill Drew. Oh, my God, they killed Drew!’” But they do kill “Skinny” gently, with the song transitioning into “Lunch” via string arrangements that are filled with nods to “Born to Die.” Not a coincidence, surely, as Eilish never understates Lana Del Rey’s influence on her own work. This much was further solidified when the two joined forces onstage during the first weekend of Del Rey’s headlining Coachella performance. As they wrapped up a duet of “Ocean Eyes” and “Video Games” (each singer’s first single, respectively), Del Rey announced, “Voice of a generation right here.” And that generation, “ladies” and “gentlemen,” is queer as fuck.
Going back to the 2019 era Eilish wants to capture, it was on When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? that Eilish’s sentiment was “wish you were gay.” That wish came true for herself rather than the boy who didn’t return her affections back then. And yes, “Lunch” is sure to become a go-to at lesbian bars and clubs the world over, with Eilish leaning (her face) into vagina readily (or, as John Bender once said to Claire Standish when she asked, “Where’s your lunch?,” “You’re wearin’ it”). And, finally, on her own terms. Like Chappell Roan with The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, this creation was what got her in touch with her queerness. Eilish recounted of writing it, “That song was actually part of what helped me become who I am, to be real. I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after. I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand—until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina.” It’s that hunger that manifests literally and figuratively on “Lunch.” Thus, the eating metaphors abound with phrases like, “Tastes like she might be the one,” “It’s a craving, not a crush” and “Somebody write down the recipe.”
Elsewhere, Eilish proves that “consent is sexy” to her generation, managing to slip in a nod to permission with the lyrics, “Clothes on the counter for you, try ‘em on/If I’m allowed, I’ll help you take ‘em off.” She also offers, “You need a seat? I’ll volunteer.” Flexing her financial prowess, Eilish is sure to showcase her masc/zaddy tendencies with the assurance, “I could buy her so much stuff.” While “Lunch” is a triumph in terms of Eilish “owning” who she is, there’s still that bittersweet realization that she never really wanted to “get into all that,” remarking, “I was never planning on talking about my sexuality ever, in a million years. It’s really frustrating to me that it came up.” And yet, she turned the “Variety outing” into a positive with the themes explored on this album. Indeed, it seems very pointed that the cover art should feature Eilish in front of an open door, ready to emerge from the one she’s been hiding behind.
Apropos of that visual, Eilish chants, “Open up the door, can you open up the door?” on “Chihiro” (the title being a reference to Spirited Away, one of the films that have majorly influenced Eilish). As Finneas delivers another uptempo backbeat, Eilish explores the theme of turning to a stranger for comfort. Especially one who seems so familiar. That much is apparent in the Spirited Away-inspired lyrics, “But there’s a part of me that recognizes you/Do you feel it too?” and “I don’t, I don’t know why I called/I don’t know you at all/I don’t know you/Not at all.” The haunting quality of the track is matched only by its bizarre danceability. Of the sort that continues on “Birds of a Feather.”
And not only is “Birds of a Feather” quite danceable despite its macabre language (e.g., “I want you to stay/‘Til I’m in the grave/‘Til I rot away, dead and buried/‘Til I’m in the casket you carry”—what does one expect from the girl who wrote “Everybody Dies”?), it also happens to showcase Eilish at her most Taylor Swift. That is, in terms of wielding a common phrase and making it her own (with Swift, there are many, from “bad blood” to “familiarity breeds contempt”). And yet, it doesn’t take long for the Lana influence to take over with the mention of the color “blue.” A shade that Del Rey wields more than any other in her music. In Eilish’s hands, blue is used to say, “And if I’m turnin’ blue, please don’t save me/Nothin’ left to lose without my baby.” It won’t be the last time blue is invoked on Hit Me Hard and Soft, and it reveals just how much Eilish, synesthete extraordinaire, has embraced it as her color, admitting, “Dude, what’s so interesting to me is that blue has always been my least-favorite color. Which is so stupid because my hair was blue for years. But I didn’t mean for it to be—that was an accident… But over the last couple of years, I’ve just been like, ‘Wait, blue is so who I am at my core.’” After all, blue is the warmest color, n’est-ce pas?
She is, additionally, LDR at her core. Continuing the homage both overt and subtle (“hard and soft,” if you will) with “Wildflower,” a title that feels like another unwitting Lana reference (whose 2021 album, Blue Banisters, features a song called “Wildflower Wildfire”), as does “The Greatest,” the same title as a signature track from Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell. With “Wildflower,” the tempo slows down again and Eilish opens with another common phrase: “Things fall apart.” The song then details a haunting love triangle that thematically reminds one of Eilish’s own version of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Obsessed.” For Eilish can’t stop obsessing over the girl who used to be with the one she’s currently with, pronouncing, “But I see her in the back of my mind all the time/Like a fever, like I’m burning alive, like a sign.”
The predilection for comparison to another person’s ex that shines through once more in the lyrics, “I’d never ask who was better/‘Cause she couldn’t be/More different from me/Happy and free in leather.” That is to say, Eilish is much more comfortable in free-flowing, cotton-based fabrics. At the three-minute-thirty-eight-second mark, it seems as though the song is ending, but, in a trend that mirrors “Happier Than Ever” (and that will come back again on “L’amour de Ma Vie”), the song reanimates with a different tincture as Eilish sings (in the tone of what comes across as a specter), “You say no one knows you so well/But every time you touch me, I just wonder how she felt/Valentine’s Day, cryin’ in the hotel/I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, so I kept it to myself.”
The morose aura persists on “The Greatest,” with Eilish rueing the day she grew attached to someone so emotionally distant. Hence, she provides a chorus dripping in sarcasm and self-loathing when she says, “Man, am I the greatest (greatest)/My congratulations (congratulations)/All my love and patience/All my admiration (admiration)/All the times I waited (waited)/For you to want me naked (naked)/I made it all look painless/Man, am I the greatest.” At around the three-minute-ten-second mark, Finneas helps change the nature of the song as Eilish belts out a power ballad-y interpretation of: “The greatest, the greatest, the greatest/I loved you and I still do/Just wanted passion from you/Just wanted what I gave you/I wanted and waited.” Her voice goes quiet again as she delivers an outro version of the chorus that goes, “Man, am I the greatest/God, I hate it/All my love and patience/Unappreciated/You said your heart was jaded/You couldn’t even break it/I shouldn’t have to say it/You could’ve been the greatest.” Which is exactly what Lana Del Rey once told Azealia Banks in the midst of a Twitter feud in 2018 (specifically, “u coulda been the greatest female rapper alive but u blew it”).
Eilish switches vocal tack on “L’Amour de Ma Vie” to more closely echo Madison Beer’s vibe, commencing the “Spinnin”-esque number with a sultry tone that assures, “I wish you the best for the rest of your life/Felt sorry for you when I looked in your eyes/But I need to confess, I told you a lie/I said you/You were the love of my life.” Needless to say, Eilish only offered that up as a consolation to the person she ended things with, not realizing they would somehow manage to hurt her more with their behavior after she tried to show them kindness. Thus, she states it the refrain, “It isn’t askin’ for a lot for an apology/For making me feel like it’d kill you if I tried to leave/You said you’d never fall in love again because of me/Then you moved on immediately.”
At the three-minute-thirteen-second mark, Eilish and Finneas “Happier Than Ever” it up again by bifurcating the song into two parts. Accordingly, Eilish’s vocal pitch changes as she again points out, “It isn’t askin’ a lot for an apology/For makin’ me feel like it’d kill you if I tried to leave/You said you’d never fall in love again because of me.” And here her voice becomes even more high-pitched as she repeats, “Then you moved on” as a heartbeat-like drum enters the fray and the tempo picks up, changing the sound entirely into an 80s-inspired ditty as Eilish chirps, “Ooh/You wanted to keep it/Like somethin’ you found/‘Til you didn’t need it/But you should’ve seen it/The way it went down/Wouldn’t believe it/Wanna know what I told her/With her hand on my shoulder?/You were so mediocre/And we’re so glad it’s over now.” Things get decidedly Grimes-y during the outro, with Eilish shrugging, “It’s such a pity/We’re both so pretty.”
On the song that follows, “The Diner” (which one could argue is a sort of companion piece to “Lunch”), Finneas jars us yet again with the abrupt sonic shift into music that is decidedly carnival-like. Indeed, “The Diner” is among the most When We All Fall Asleep-type songs on the record. On the ostensible “necessity” of revisiting “the past” (even if one as fresh as 2019) for this album, Finneas commented, “When Billie talks about the era of When We All Fall Asleep, it was this theatricality and this darkness. What’s the thing that no one is as good at as Billie is? This album was an exploration of what we do best.” And that exploration is all too palpable on “The Diner.” In the Billie voice we recognize from such songs as “bury a friend,” she croons, “Don’t be afraid of me/I’m what you need/I saw you on the screens/I know we’re meant to be/You’re starrin’ in my dreams.” Ah yes, the dream (/nightmare) motif that Eilish became known for is back and better than ever, with the singer revisiting some terrifying, stalker-y themes (as present on Happier Than Ever’s “NDA”)—this time from the perspective of an actual stalker. And who would know better about that ilk than Eilish? (Even though this song is meant to be in the spirit of the fictional “dark little stories” Billie and Finneas are known for coming up with à la “Bellyache.”)
So it is that she delivers such “Stan”-esque lines as, “I’ll go back to the diner/I’ll write another letter (I’ll write another letter)/I hope you’ll read it this time/You better.” The evocation of this “old-timey” sort of communication (including “I memorized your number/Now I call you when I please”—with Gen Z having no concept of that being the norm “back in the day”) not only speaks to the unique form of “devotion” this stalker has, but also Eilish’s own “old soul” stylings (much like, again, Lana Del Rey)…even though she once egregiously misinterpreted the meaning of “Picture to Burn.” These “old soul” inclinations are further emphasized by the fact that she and Finneas were intent on making an “album-ass album” (ah, such California parlances). Something you could actually enjoy listening to from beginning to end. This being a task that is decidedly against everything her generation represents.
Finneas touches on that in the same Rolling Stone article, commenting, “We’re not even at ‘song’ anymore. We’re at the line from the second verse that blew up on TikTok. We’re mostly watching content in vertical that was made an hour ago—some person telling you their thoughts about something from an hour ago.” But both Eilish and Finneas come across as staunchly against adhering to that “method.” And this is precisely why Eilish refused to release any singles from the album, explaining, “I really don’t like when things are out of context. This album is like a family: I don’t want one little kid to be in the middle of the room alone.”
And yes, it would be kind of weird for a song like “Bittersuite” to be in the middle of the proverbial room alone. Already announcing itself with an “Express Yourself” meets The Weeknd on After Hours or Dawn FM type of opening, this particular song has perhaps the most otherworldly quality of all. In addition to mimicking something that could be found on When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, Eilish conjures easy comparisons to the second song on Happier Than Ever, “I Didn’t Change My Number,” singing in the same intonation during the verse, “I’ve been havin’ dreams/You were in the foyer/I was on my knees/Outside of my body/Watchin’ from above/I see the way you want me/I wanna be the one.” The themes of feeling disconnected/dissociated are on full blast here, with Eilish further ruminating on her inability to fall in love with someone “no matter how bad I want to.”
That revelation seems to be the direct cause of slowing everything down around the one-minute-thirty-second mark as yet another song on the album splits into two parts, with “Bittersuite” becoming as carnival-like as “The Diner” when Eilish starts to sing the chorus, “I don’t need to breathe when you look at me, all I see is green/And I think that we’re in between everything/I’ve seen/In my dream, have it once a week, can’t land on my feet/Can’t sleep, have you underneath all of my beliefs/Keep it briеf/I’ll wait in the suite/Keep me off my feet.”
In another surreal portion of the track, Eilish relishes becoming self-referential as she languidly utters, “We can be discrete…/L’amour de ma vie/Love so bittersweet, mm/Open up the door for me, for me.” The “discrete” line refers to “The Diner,” while “L’amour de ma vie” is a direct mention of a previous song title. What’s more, “love so bittersweet” alludes to “Bittersuite” itself and “open up the door for me” is a nod to “Chihiro.” Clearly, Eilish is feeling secure enough in her songwriting prowess to allow herself to be this meta.
Taking us on a few more meandering sonic journeys before ending, “Bittersuite” finally gives way to “Blue,” which has decided “Get Free” by LDR characteristics. This extends, most obviously, to Eilish paralleling the verse, “I wanna move/Out of the black (out of the black)/Into the blue (into the blue)” with “I try to live in black and white, but I’m so blue.” She then repeats phrases from previous songs on the album again, including, “Birds of a feather,” “mon amour,” “open up the door,” “I’m still overseas” and “a bird in a cage.” She even wields a phrase that Madonna took ownership of in 1986, singing, “True blue, true blue/I’m true blue.” Finneas splits the track again at around the one-minute-fifty-five-second mark, giving the second half its own separate personality as Eilish quavers, “You were born bluer than a butterfly/Beautiful and so deprived of oxygen/Colder than your father’s eyes/He never learned to sympathize with anyone.”
At certain points, it sounds like Eilish is trying to drum up sympathy for a nepo baby when she subsequently intones, “You were born reachin’ for your mother’s hands/Victim of your father’s plans to rule the world/Too afraid to step outside/Paranoid and petrified of what you’ve heard.” Her soft, ethereal tone then switches to something slightly more sinister—“demonic” even—when she sings, “But they could say the same ’bout me/I sleep ’bout three hours each night/Means only twenty-one a week now, now/And I could say the same ’bout you/Born blameless, grew up famous too/Just a baby born blue now, now.” Who knows? Maybe this is her empathy song written with her beloved idol, Justin Bieber, in mind.
Whatever the case, “Blue” tops anything on When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? with regard to creating an alternate realm that mirrors Eilish’s rich, often morbid world. And if that was the primary objective of her debut, Hit Me Hard and Soft does it one better, with Eilish achieving the goal she set out to with this record: returning to “2019 me”—with an even spookier 2024 twist.
Genna Rivieccio
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