Billie Eilish Releases Highly-Anticipated Third Studio Album ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’
The singer opted to withhold releasing any singles ahead of the album’s arrival to allow for it to all be consumed at once
Billie Eilish at the 'Hit Me Hard And Soft' Album Release Party on May 15, 2024 in NYC. ARTURO HOLMES/GETTY IMAGES/ABA
Billie Eilish’s Highly-Anticipated third studio album is here. Hit Me Hard and Soft arrives with 10 previously unreleased songs, as the singer opted to withhold from sharing any singles ahead of the album’s arrival to allow for it to be consumed all at once.
As with her previous albums, 2019’s When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go and 2021’s Happier Than Ever, Eilish wrote Hit Me Hard and Soft with her primary collaborator, Finneas, who produced the album. The writing across the record explores topics of sexuality, physical appearance, and the breakthroughs the 22-year-old experiences while creating it.
“I feel like this album is me,” Eilish told Rolling Stone in her May 2024 cover story. “It’s not a character. It feels like the When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? version of me. It feels like my youth and who I was as a kid.”
The singer said that Hit Me Hard and Soft cleared a pathway for the singer to return to that version of herself. “This whole process has felt like I’m coming back to the girl that I was. I’ve been grieving her,” she added. “I’ve been looking for her in everything, and it’s almost like she got drowned by the world and the media. I don’t remember when she went away.”
And as her brother, in addition to her co-writer and producer, Finneas witnessed this transformation happen in real-time. “In some ways, growing on [Hit Me Hard and Soft] meant revisiting a lot of things,” he told Rolling Stone. “I feel like this album has some real ghosts in it, and I say that with love. There’s ideas on this album that are five years old, and there’s a past to it, which I really like. When Billie talks about the era of When We All Fall Asleep, it was this theatricality and this darkness. What’s the thing that no one is as good at as Billie is? This album was an exploration of what we do best.”
Later this year, Eilish will take Hit Me Hard and Soft on an extensive world tour. Before the album even arrived, the musician began easing fans back into the world of her live shows with special album listening parties hosted at arenas in New York and Los Angeles. She also teamed up with select AMC locations to host listening parties in movie theaters throughout the U.S. on May 16 and 17.
From Rolling Stone US.
