Every once in a while, I come across an album that I love deeply from the very first listen. HIT ME HARD AND SOFT by Billie Eilish is one of those albums. Unless the greatest album ever recorded comes out in the next two and a half months, I think this is going to be my album of the year for 2024. I may be five months late to the party, but I really just want to talk about how great this album is.
HIT ME HARD AND SOFT came across my radar for the first time when it was the topic of discussion for an episode of Ghost Notes, which is one of my favorite podcasts. I listened to the episode, in which the hosts heaped praise on HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, and I made a mental note to check the album out at some point, but I didn't really think about it much after that. I did, however, remember that The Diner was singled out by the Ghost Notes crew as a particularly good song.
A few months later, I bought the album on a whim while on my lunch break. I had felt like doing a little bit of shopping, so I went somewhere I knew I was likely to find a couple of CDs, and I found HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. It was either that or Taylor Swift, so I picked up the Billie Eilish album and thought about that episode of Ghost Notes. I was working late that night, so I set the CD aside to listen to the next day. When I did, I was absolutely blown away.
The opening track, Skinny, immediately caught my attention. As a guitar player, I love to hear electric guitar start off an album. And then Billie's singing came in, and I knew right away that I was listening to something good. The chamber strings outro (which I didn't know yet was a call forward to The Greatest) rounds out an amazing opening track, and then I listened to Lunch for the first time.
Okay, not exactly the first time. I heard Lunch for the first time in my friend's car on the way to a soccer game, but it wasn't all that loud and we were talking over it anyways. But I did notice that it was cool, and I'm pretty sure I mentioned something about needing to check the album out, which Soleil agreed with and then we moved on to other matters (like the fact that she'd driven us to completely the wrong place!). But let me just say, Lunch is a completely different experience when you listen to it with headphones on, completely focused on the song. I knew Billie Eilish had come out as bisexual recently, and I knew that she was into girls, but I was not exactly ready for the second song on the album to be such a direct tribute to sapphic sexuality. Needless to say, I love the song and can't get enough of it.
I could go on like this, praising every song on the album, but I'll limit myself to just two more. First, The Greatest has been an earworm for me since my second or third listen. I love when songs start small and intimate before exploding into a loud and intense experience. Knowing that, if you're familiar with the album it shouldn't surprise you that my favorite song is L'Amour De Ma Vie for that same reason. Neither The Greatest nor L'Amour De Ma Vie would benefit from me trying to explain them here, so just go listen to them if you haven't yet. They're dynamic, expressive, and break out of the typical pop mold brilliantly.
And that's what I really love about this album as a whole. It's deeply expressive emotionally, and part of what makes that expressiveness compelling is the way songs follow an emotional arc rather than a typical song form consisting of a verse and chorus that each repeat, a bridge, and a final chorus. That basic structure exists here, but Billie Eilish stretches and distorts those forms so that the songs don't feel disorienting, but they do feel unpredictable when you're listening for the first time. Once you're familiar with the music and know what's coming next, it's very satisfying to see the twists coming ahead of time. Eilish has always been masterful at crafting outros, and HIT ME HARD AND SOFT takes that to an entirely new level. It can sometimes be hard to tell when one song ends and another begins, and it's not always obvious whether you're listening to the outro of one song or the intro of the next. The flow of the album is so well thought out that I'm going to repeat my frequent refrain on this blog: the best albums are the ones that are experienced best as one cohesive work rather than just a collection of songs, and HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is one of those albums.
Before I wrap things up, I do want to comment on the sonic palette of the album. It's a pretty guitar heavy album by 2024 standards, which I appreciate. HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is a very human feeling album with plenty of personality. Even the synth parts, which are frequently the target of accusations of music sounding "impersonal" are imbued with a human touch. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that most of the sound design sounds like it could have come out of the late 1990s. When the synths are in the foreground, they're usually brash sawtooths with beautifully obnoxious filters that sounded dated on my first listen, but on further reflection I think they sound like a tribute to the over-the-top production styles of the past. It may stand out like a sore thumb today, but it's an aesthetic choice that, while jarring to me, still works to support the overall work. You wouldn't expect those synths on such a chill album, but it works.
Obviously, I'm giving HIT ME HARD AND SOFT ten stars out of ten, there's no other way to rate this album. It's been in constant rotation in the car, at home, and anywhere else I happen to be listening to music. I'm so thankful that I found this CD on that lunch break, and I'm also very happy I got to share the experience of discovering this album with Soleil, who has also become an enthusiastic fan after I shared my experiences listening to the album for the first time over text. My favorite song now, as it was on my first listen, is L'Amour De Ma Vie. The video recording below omits the extended outro, but it's still such a great recording that I've got to share it.
