Billie Eilish’s ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’: All 10 Songs Ranked

The album’s penultimate monitor depends extra on Finneas’ suave manufacturing tips than it does on any lyrics or message, but it surely’s positively a enjoyable pay attention. Its fragmented pacing might also deliberately replicate the impatience Eilish feels with sustaining a relationship beneath the calls for of her public-facing job, which she addresses on strains like, “I gotta watch out, gotta watch what I say/ God I hope all of it goes away.”

A feverish daydream of a music, “The Diner” marks a less-serious break within the album, akin to Eilish’s early hit “Bellyache,” on which she fantasized about toting her buddies’ lifeless our bodies round at the back of her automobile. This time, she imagines herself as a delusional stalker — maybe even embodying one in all her personal rabid followers — breaking and coming into into her goal’s dwelling within the hopes of sometime getting married.

“I got here in by way of the kitchen in search of one thing to eat,” she croons. “I left a calling card so they’d know that it was me.”

Named after Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away heroine, “Chihiro” has so much happening. A fab slap bass and distorted synth twinkles underscore one of many hookiest moments of the entire album, when Eilish sings, “Did you’re taking my love away from me?” As a complete, although, the music creates extra of a video game-ready atmosphere versus obeying a extra conventional construction.

“L’Amour de Ma Vie” calls again to the cheekiness of Eilish’s earliest tracks, like “Bitches Damaged Hearts” or “Social gathering Favor.” “I have to confess I advised you a lie,” she sings ruefully on the primary half of the distinctly two-part monitor, “after I mentioned you have been the love of my life.”

On “Blue,” Eilish and Finneas reprise lots of the motifs launched all through the album — just like “Goodbye” on When We All Fall Asleep — together with the fantastic string break on the primary monitor, “Skinny.” Swelling and cumulative, the album’s swan music is all about accepting circumstances for what they’re, for all their magnificence, ache and all the things in between.

And sure, you heard her accurately on the very finish. “When can they hear the subsequent one?” Eilish asks in a matter-of-fact talking voice, probably hinting at a second album coming very quickly.

“Lunch” finds Eilish fantasizing a few woman she needs to — as she places it — eat for lunch, singing over an immediately addictive beat that ultimately devolves into an all-out club-ready dance banger. It marks the musician’s first time explicitly expressing her attraction to ladies in a music, a process she takes on joyously and freely.

“Birds of a Feather” is stuffed with clichés; even its title is likely one of the English language’s oldest idioms. However coming from a younger star whose fame was propelled by her quirky outfits, edgy lyrical topics and brash interview responses, such a simplistic love music is definitely fairly refreshing. Critics of Eilish’s vibrato-heavy signature vocal type shall be silenced upon listening to her belt along with her full diaphragm on this sentimental monitor, which is completely primed for a placement in a summery teen rom-com or two.

Eilish opens Hit Me Exhausting and Comfortable with a music that bridges the reflection she did on Happier Than Ever about stardom and self-image with the extra nuanced perspective she’s gained since then. Three years later, the star appears to have made peace along with her station whereas nonetheless being sincere about its drawbacks, describing it right here as being like “a chook in a cage” or “a canine in a canine pound.”

“Twenty-one took a lifetime/ Folks say I look blissful simply because I bought skinny,” she continues earlier than letting listeners in on somewhat secret, one of many thesis statements of Hit Me Exhausting and Comfortable: “However the previous me remains to be me/ And possibly the true me and I believe she’s fairly.”

Followers of the again half of “Happier Than Ever” are certain to like “The Best.” It begins as an unimposing ballad about craving for extra appreciation and reciprocation in a relationship, however ultimately ramps up right into a cinematic rock free-for-all, through which Eilish as soon as once more lets free for a second of superb belting. This time, Eilish takes overdue inventory of her personal self-worth, as a substitute of simply specializing in her ex’s shortcomings, making this a shallowness anthem as a lot as it’s a breakup music.

“Wildflower” boasts a few of Eilish’s most mature songwriting but, by way of each craft and perspective. Soulful and gloomy, it makes telling a fancy story look easy, with the singer quietly struggling as she comes undone obsessing over her accomplice’s ex-girlfriend.

Lyrics like “I’d by no means ask who was higher/ ‘Trigger she couldn’t be extra completely different from me/ Pleased and free in leather-based,” as an illustration, are each simple and visceral, whereas the road “I do know you didn’t imply to harm me/ So I stored it to myself” is devastating in context. And versus a number of the different standout songs on HMHAS, Eilish’s narration is the centerpiece, not the manufacturing.