Billie Eilish: "Hit Me Hard And Soft" Album Review

In terms of craftsmanship and aesthetics, this album does almost everything right. "Hit Me Hard And Soft" by Billie Eilish and Finneas takes all the lessons from its predecessor "Happier Than Ever" and executes them perfectly. The genre variety remains, the beat switches, the palpable ambition, but this album is more compact, with better pacing, and overall tighter. Billie's eternal quest for meaning has never aimed more precisely at classic status. So, I would feel bad not writing that everything works, everything is done right. It's straight-A student pop with a gold star and special commendation. And yet, after a dozen listens, I realized that this album does almost nothing for me.

I've long debated with myself whether I should just write a diplomatic 4/5 review like I do for other Denzel Curry-esque artists where there's no reason for me not to like it; objectively, it's very good. Believe me, it wouldn't be hard to fill the review with praise for this album.

Let's do that for a while! "Hit Me Hard And Soft" is great at creating musical moments. A big factor in this is Finneas, who especially in the transitions between tracks works his producer magic. How this album transitions from small to big, from atmospheric to groovy, from loud to soft: it's a grand spectacle. Billie has definitively left bedroom pop behind; she's never sounded so cinematic. On "The Greatest," she even belts out!

And she belts out wonderfully: in terms of technique, it's amazing how few boundaries this album knows. Microhouse with ambitious psychedelic synths on "Chihiro," Prince-like heart-wrenching on "Birds Of A Feather." An unusual silver screen interpretation of the typical Billie ballad on "Bittersuite" and "Blue." It's a musical and emotional laser light show, sonically stunning and full of "ohhs" and "ahhs."

The switch-up to the super-cold disco crescendo on "L'amour De Ma Vie" particularly stands out; who doesn't love a good "oh shit, here we go" moment? But classic pop structures also find their place: "Lunch" convinces not only as the much-talked-about queer sex jam; in an album full of five-minute efforts, it feels almost bold to just groove away for three minutes with a good bassline. The stalker fantasy "The Diner" also plays with classic formulas and shows the strength of her pop instincts.

So: sonically everything done right. Listening to this album, it feels like a classic. Do I mind the lyrics? Not really - there are moments where they feel like repeats of the previous album, like on "Skinny." But even here, there's little to criticize in terms of craftsmanship. Billie tells her own story, draws from her life, and makes herself approachable to the point of transparency. And even though she doesn't do this worse than before, it feels to me like there are cracks in the premise.

"Hit Me Hard And Soft" fails in its own promise of honesty. Billie is seen as the voice of her generation, the most authentic young girl. She was praised for being so good at being young. And now she responds to this parasocial promise with an even more epic self-revelation than on the previous album. She wants to show even more clearly, even deeper. But you can't endlessly escalate self-revelation. Becoming more relentless and more openly honest with each album; what she imagines as the core of her art is capitalist growth logic, where she exploits her own soul.

Accordingly, the music reflects this harder-better-stronger-faster, as if to show: the search for meaning is now even more intense. But Billie has been documenting a gradually mutating existential crisis in real time since she was 15. Is being a superstar and making art the drive or the solution to this existential crisis? In any case, it seems to be gradually turning into a Sisyphean task. The way out has been present since her debut: I would like to see more persona, more weirdness, more layers again. Tracks that don't immediately make clear what they're about and then hammer the announced effect over your head with thunder and trumpets. That's why "Chihiro" and "The Diner" are the best songs here. They don't claim to be honest per se. Because the deepest, innermost truth of a person doesn't exist, and authenticity as a concept is one of the greatest misunderstandings we direct against our art and ourselves: we will never arrive there.

"Hit Me Hard And Soft" is the aesthetically perfect, impressive, ambitious execution of an unsolvable task. It is Sisyphus-Billie.