Hit Me Hard And Soft Album Review

The Hit Me Hard And Soft album is a masterpiece. In the sequence of songs, Billie Eilish shows off her true range and depth in vocalization and songwriting. She expresses herself in her most honest form in this album in a very emotional and raw display of music. She confesses things about herself and shows sides never seen before. One of my favorites of all time for sure. 

SKINNY

The soft tone of the electric guitar picking pattern takes us into a vulnerable state of Billie. She immediately confesses the troubles that she has had over the past year summing it all up by saying “21 took a lifetime.” To end off the first verse she confronts the talk about her body and how people assume she is in a good place just because her body is skinny. One of my favorite lines is “The old me is still me and maybe the real me/ And I think she’s pretty.” The line is so raw and confessional to the fact that body image isn’t everything, and even when you look good sometimes it’s not enough and does not give you mental strength. She weeps, admitting to us “And I still cry” showing the audience that appearance is deceiving and even though you look good doesn’t mean you can’t be sad. The second verse tells us a bit more about why she could possibly be so sad. She poses two questions that tell us what the public and the media say about her. Comparing herself to a caged animal after she gets off the stage tells us that she feels trapped by crowds that man handles her like she isn’t human. The cheering crowd in the background of this line really heightens the feelings. The line “And you said I was your secret/ And you didn’t get to keep it” demonstrates a type of letdown that is most likely felt by a relationship tried to keep private but ruined by the media. The following line “And the internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny/ And somebody’s gotta feed it” treats the internet as some big animal or monster that is just looking for more things to consume and doesn’t care about the cost or who it hurts. The bridge tells us that our girl Billie is fed up with this crap after years of staying calm about it. It is gentle, so it is deceiving what she is saying. But the gentle tone makes her kind of sound just exhausted by everything and pleading for it to all end. The beautiful sound of the strings at the end sounds to me like an orchestral version of the song “THE GREATEST” from this album, giving us a little taste of what is about to come. 

LUNCH

As we head into “LUNCH,” it is obvious that Billie is recovering a bit from “SKINNY.” We’ve got a complete tempo and beat change. This one is a bit more confident and happy. She immediately reveals that in this song and potentially in this entire album that she is talking about a woman. Earlier, before the release of this album, Billie came out as queer. Multiple interviews concluded that Billie felt good about this change and didn’t really see it as a change at all since she thought it was obvious the entire time. So in listening to “LUNCH,” it’s clear she has entered a new phase of experimental relationships, but I am sure she had been having them the entire time. It is just now public that she has attractions to both men and women. There are a string of lines in all the verses that tell us that Billie and this mystery woman are having sexual relations. All Billie wants in this interaction is to please the woman and admire her. The small details of adding in all the ad-libby breaths in the background of the lyrics give us a bit of an overarching understanding of the bedroom with these two. The song is honestly quite provocative if you listen to the lyrics for real which is masked by its catchiness. 

CHIHIRO

This track opens up with a bouncy, crisp beat. The lyrics tell us that Billie is focused on a new type of relationship. It seems that the person is constantly manipulating her, not ever knowing where she stands. She wants to confront this but has no idea how. The line “I got change (yup), you could borrow (borrow)” shows us the manner in which she devotes herself to this person. She lets them take everything from her. The pre-choruses all start with “Open up the door, can you open up the door?” This type of line shows us a bit of uncertainty about the relationship and Billie kind of just waiting around for this person to let her in. The chorus follows in with the strong baseline and more questions that pertain to the hurt that this person is causing. It displays confusion and hurt in a calm way. The echoes of all the voices in the second verse create a kind of hazy hallucination for what this relationship really was. Finally admitting “I don’t, I don’t know why I called/ I don’t know you at all” quietly tells us that she is a bit scared and maybe ashamed of falling for this person. Following this, she begins to scream these lines again with the music heightening in the background getting louder and louder, a synthesizer rings out. Eventually, it quiets back down and we head into a repetition of the chorus. Suddenly, she is out of this headspace and she says “And that’s when you found me.” This to me means that someone found her while she was in deep contemplation about the toxic relationship and got her out of a bad headspace. In the outro, the synthesizer pattern picks up again in combination with faded wonderings but ends off with a short and quiet “hm-hm,” showing a somewhat understanding and clarity about what has happened.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

The opening lines “I want you to stay/ Til I’m in the grave” tell us that this is a sentimental message about someone Billie cares about. I find that the song could be a dedication to her close relationship with her brother Finneas, but I also know that most artists like for listeners to interpret their music into their own lives. So for now, I refer to what I think is Finneas as “this person.” The first verse gives us the essential statement that “If you go, I’m going too.” This tells us that Billie feels so strongly about this person that she would follow them anywhere and do anything for them. The chorus is a catchy sequence of lyrics that make us understand that she feels passionate that the two never leave each other. They may not be able to change the hardships coming their way but if it all happens together, it will all be okay. The sequence that begins with “But you’re so full of shit” takes us into a little turn of negativity, but it is quick and playful. We head back into a pre-chorus and a following chorus that emphasises the way she feels towards this person. A beautiful and light echo follows behind this repeating the lyrics in a harmonistic way. The track ends off with the lyric “I love you, don’t act so surprised.” This line is so meaningful in that loving somebody can be deceiving and when someone tells you that they love you, you should believe them and go with it. 

WILDFLOWER

The stroke of the acoustic guitar accompanied by footsteps in the rain gives us a chill and devastating feel for what’s about to come. It seems that this one tells a story of a couple that doesn’t involve Billie. It seems that the one that was hurt in this situation was a friend of hers. The friend used Billie as a safe space and a “shoulder to cry on” after her relationship ended. This friendship between this woman and Billie grew stronger and stronger but suddenly, everything changed in the middle of summer. Now, everyday Billie seems to wake up with regret. It is clear that she did something to hurt her friend. The chorus is a burst of hurt and feeling. We understand the regret and yearning for Billie to get this relationship with this person back. She thinks of her all the time in everything she does and feels the pain of the way she betrayed her, admitting this by asking “Did I cross the line?” The next verse is a series of excuses as to why all of this may have happened. Brushing it all off by saying “But she couldn’t be (more different from me)” in hopes that she feels better at the thought that they weren’t compatible anyways. The faint line of “But everytime you touch me, I just wonder how she felt” tells us that she must have taken her friend’s significant other. Now, every time her lover engages with her sexually, she just wonders about her friend that she betrayed. The acoustic guitar fades out and the last repetition shows us a last feeling of regret, realizing none of it was even worth it. 

THE GREATEST 

The deep breath in gives us a notion that everything Billie is about to say will be tough. The first string of lyrics is an ode to the efforts of impressing people in her life. She expresses that the people that ask so much of her and take her for granted don’t even realize how lonely she truly feels. Nevertheless, she gives people what they want no matter her state of mind. So, instead of telling everyone how much pain she has been in, she puts a bandaid on it- “Man, am I the greatest?” The next verse is a devotion to all that she does that goes unnoticed. She emphasizes that she would have done anything for her relationships. Suddenly, we get more specific- “All the times I waited/ For you to want me naked.” She admits that she was devoted and gave up pieces of herself for one person. For her love relationship. The build up of the drums and the yell of “Man, am I the greates?” and the belts that follow show us the true pain of guessing what this relationship did to her. The bridge is a cry for help where she admits that she is almost addicted to this person. They don’t love her as much as she loves them, yet she still yearns for it. She so desperately just wanted this person to love her as she had loved them. Emphasis on “Just wanted passion from you/ Just wanted what I gave you.” All of the screams and drums and belting comes together to give us a musical expression of her pain, and suddenly it all goes quiet. She repeats the build up one more time but this time, in a quieter voice, a whisper. She ends off with the powerful line: “You could’ve been the greatest.” Because together, loving each other the way they should have, they could have been beautiful and “great.”

L’AMOUR DE MA VIE

The electric guitar bass notes ring out in a sassy tone. Telling us that our girl Billie has moved on but also she wishes her past lover well. We recap the turn of events in a love story that stung in the end. She blames herself for the feelings her ex feels that involve hurt but she seems almost proud to have broken his heart. She doesn’t seem sorry because it seems like she gave it her all, yet he went behind her back and did something slimy. She mocks what he said before they left each other and the feelings he manipulated her into believing. Her slight giggle and the line “Then you moved on immediately (bum, bum, bum)” tells us that everything he said was a blatant lie. Nevertheless, she wishes him well, but to get the fuck away from her. She admits now that she feels nothing for him and that she too lied to him in saying that she cared for him. This shows off a side of pettiness for the way he hurt her and her lack of regret leaving the relationship behind. The bridge is a string of jealousy-tinted statements about the new love he has and one last time calls out how difficult he made her life. The outro is a calm and lower toned final statement. She reflects on her feelings of anxiety she would feel during their relationship. She realizes that before she thought she was going crazy, but upon leaving him, she came to the obvious revelation that HE was the thing that made her so grossly anxious. Finally, she puts her foot down saying “I was the love of your life/ But you were not mine.” She says this and makes him small because now she is saying she does not care what he does because she never did! The repetition of the line “Then you moved on” over and over again brings us into a tag on to the rest of the track. The beat kicks up and we start into an almost completely different song feel. She is relentlessly focused on the way he wanted to control her. She is resentful over the time she wasted on this person. She fixates on where he is caught now with his new girl and she knows he misses her. She is free now screaming “It’s over now” in a slew of techno beats. To top the whole thing off she makes a last statement “It’s such a pity/ We’re both so pretty” which to me is a dig at the man. In this I believe she is saying “It sucks that me and her both got fucked over by you because us girls are pretty and you are ugly.”

THE DINER 

“THE DINNER” is such an interesting piece to me. The saucy keyboard combination in the intro is so promiscuous and gives off a creepy vibe. This is just what Billie was going for though. Various sources have reported that this particular song is a credit to a stalker that Billie had to dispose of and the note that he left her. So, this track is made to be a display of this creeper’s point of view. He truly believed that he should be around Billie and involved in her life. He claims in his letters that he saw Billie on tv and he could “change her life.” The lines “I’m here around the clock/ I’m waiting on your block” are meant to represent the true watching that this man was doing literally every single day in order to get close to her. It is interesting that Billie was able to see into the eyes of someone that was after her and continue through the whole song singing as “I.” It is almost as if she understands what he believed his intentions were so clearly. She makes him sound so deceivingly innocent that he pleads with her not to call the cops on him because “They’ll make me stop/ And I just wanna talk.” She makes it sound like he had no intention of her hurting her while simultaneously making him seem so dangerous with the tone of the music. The choruses are such a descriptive confession of his plans and how he wanted to execute them to get to her. Alas, every time his plan fails, the lyrics tell us that every failure led him back to the diner to write out another creepy ass letter for Billie to receive. Finally, the outro is a slur and echo of eerie statements that the stalker wants to leave off on. He makes us understand that he is still always watching her and follows her. He threatens her new man that she sees at night and makes it known that if something weird or bad happens, you should know that he did it. The string of numbers at the end of the track actually lead you to a real message if you decide to dial!

BITTERSUITE

The distortion to slow steady beat aligned with the elongated lyrics “I can’t fall in love with you” explain the pain in knowing that Billie cares about someone but can’t feel it in her heart to be in love with them. She describes a sexual encounter between herself and this person and describes the way that she feels so utterly not interested in being in the moment with them. Suddenly, the music lightens up into bossa nova. Steady beats. The next verse is almost a part of a different song. The lyrics are less clear, more muffled. The message to me is that her mind is racing and she is overly observant. She repeats “when you look at me, all I see is green.” The phrase “seeing green” can mean a multitude of things, but I think in this context I believe that there is a feeling of envy and resentment that Billie feels towards her partner and maybe even a visual sickness about them still being together. She admits that she has been having dreams about someone else that she does love. She drops two mentions of other previous songs “L’amour de ma vie” and says “Open up the door for me” which must be a reference to “CHIHIRO.” The bossa nova music fades out and we enter into another section of the song where the tempo and overall feel changes a third time. The crashes of the beats make the music sound like it is getting further away. The lyrics are very faint and honestly I can’t hear them unless I am looking at them, reading as the song fades out. Far away it seems like we are hearing a small argument or debate. The music is flat but a vibration and one last sequence plays in the outro. The synthesizer version of a once teased tune on Billie’s social media, previously known as “True Blue” rings out. We fade into the next track in what sounds like an unfinished and questionable sequence.

BLUE

The bass rings out in a more confident and less conflicted sounding introduction. The flow of the lyrics is an obvious close to a complicated but beautiful mess of a story. The lyrics remind me of one of Billie’s closing tracks from her album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? In that track, Billie ends her album by meshing together the central lyrics from each of the tracks on the album. It gives the audience closure from the work. In this track ‘BLUE,” I find that she is doing something similar. She repeats lyrics from each of the previous tracks, painting us a final picture. All her thoughts from the whole album combined into one final beautiful mess. The tune of “True Blue” fades away and again we enter a different section of the song. We hear what sounds like an admiration of someone else but really it is an observation of the depression they feel and a callout to where they got it; from their father. Which is not phrased as a good thing. She lets go of resentment towards her partner. She tells a story of him and how his parents damaged him but it isn’t his fault. Her voice then drops an octave and a robotic tone arises. She admits that he has issues but “they could say the same bout me/ I sleep bout three hours each night/ Means only 21 a week now.” She finds relation in herself and him, recognizing that they grew up the same way surrounded by families with fame. (I think it is clear now that we are talking about Jesse Rutherford). She recognizes the similarities between them so she does not fault him for the ways he acts towards her and how their relationship had to fail. So, she lets go of her anger but is stubborn that the relationship can’t be saved. A melody fades in from “THE GREATEST” as the outro accompanied by some sort of ticking. We end off with the wails of Billie and the pain this time in her life has caused her as well as some orchestral instruments which lightens the tone mixed in with the repetition of “It’s over now.” The official closure is inside of this short symphony. Just when you think it’s over, the cherry sits on top with the final lyric “But when can I hear the next one?” and an abrupt ending ensuring us that there will be more eventually.