Billie Eilish Dares to Write (Twisted) Love Songs
The New York Times
“Hit Me Hard and Soft,” her third album, is both concise and far-reaching.
“Twenty-one took a lifetime,” Billie Eilish, 22, sings in “Skinny,” the song that opens her third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”
Any woman her age could say that; it’s just math. But even before she was old enough to vote, Eilish had packed a lifetime of accomplishments into a career that she began in 2015 as a teenager uploading songs to SoundCloud. Since then, Eilish has racked up billions of streams, an armload of Grammy Awards, two Oscars and a full-length documentary. On “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” she deliberately tamps down some pop expectations while she warily embraces others.
Eilish has both the time-honored musicianship that awards shows admire and the metanarrative savvy of her digital-era generation. Countless imitators have learned from — and been emboldened by — her blend of raw revelations, graceful melodies and wily productions, abetted by her brother and songwriting partner, Finneas.
Their historically grounded pop recombines musical theater, parlor songs, punk, folk, electronica, soundtracks, bossa nova, industrial rock and more. Eilish brings to all of them the poise of a vintage crooner: the capacity to float above beats and jolts, to treat a microphone as a confidant. Her voice can be breathy and intimate or eye-rolling and sardonic; at very strategic moments, she reveals her power to belt.
Eilish’s 2019 debut album, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?,” mapped gothic nightmares, adolescent obsessions and lingering traumas along with an occasional giggle. Her second, “Happier Than Ever” in 2021, reacted directly to the attention, shock, exploitation, stalking, exhaustion and newfound power that success brought her.
“Skinny” is a hushed update on Eilish’s superstardom. “Am I acting my age now?/Am I already on the way out?,” she sings, along with thoughts on her body shape, finding nontoxic love, her sense of isolation and a resigned reaction to social media: “The internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny/and somebody’s gotta feed it.”
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