Hit Me Hard and Soft

A record that whispers its way through a marvellous maze of music to deliver some big emotional wallops.

Eilish has made something rich, strange, smart, sad and wise enough to stand comparison with that classic [Joni Mitchell's Blue], a heartbreak masterpiece for her generation, and for the ages.

Eilish is also exercising her knack for turning a song around on a dime, mid-stream, as previously heard in the whisper-to-a-scream title track of “Happier Than Ever.” So it’s a 10-track record that happens to contain 13 excellent songs.

Tight, simple, and effective, Hit Me Hard and Soft does just that: it comes in with a bang, thrilling with fresh production and heavy lyrical content, before easing the listener into the murky emotional depths seen on the cover art.

I don’t think anyone in modern mainstream music — certainly nobody on the same scale of global fame — analyses and unpicks the breadth of their trauma, in so piercing and revealing a way as Billie Eilish does here. .... I’ve found Hit Me Hard And Soft to be a focused, self-contained, sometimes stunning piece of work. If there’s a flaw, to mix metaphors, it may be that having grown in ambition and sanded down some rough edges, the music is easier to swallow, which risks one missing some of the richness (and edginess) of flavour.

Hit Me Hard And Soft might be the very best pop album released so far in 2024, and it’s certainly one of the most enjoyable.

Packed with multipart songs and self-referential lyrics that reward repeat listens, the album is a world unto itself—and the most fully realized version of Eilish’s sound.

Ravishing. .... Newfound emotional liberation in her storytelling extends to the adventurous structures of tunes. .... What registers as a bigger shift is the gutsiness of Eilish’s singing: Long known as a committed whisperer, she belts here in a way we’ve never heard from her before.

Eilish and Finneas further expand their sonic territory, reveling in electronics and plush subtleties, while they alternately honor and warp pop structures. .... In that song ["Blue"], and for a good part of the album, Eilish turns her gaze toward characters outside herself and sets aside easy pop satisfactions. She has earned the prerogatives of a superstar, and on “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” she’s using them.

A couple of contemporary artists with a similar method come to mind: Caroline Polachek and Christine and the Queens. Like their celebrated works, Hit Me Hard and Soft is equal parts nuanced and multidimensional.

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT has rewritten the year’s narrative by not overstaying its welcome. Who could have guessed that, nowadays, a 40-minute album runtime would be such a breath of fresh air? Finneas’ arrangements are so tight and complimentary to Eilish’s own macabre tendencies and unfiltered anecdotes that it’s impossible to not be charmed by the sheer lack of fuss this record expounds.

Hit Me Hard and Soft is cohesive thematically, but in terms of what Eilish is singing over, the pair of siblings sound completely rejuvenated. Hit Me Hard and Soft can be devastating, though, and those experiencing some form of heartbreak will likely connect instantly with the album’s earnest journey.

For 43 minutes straight, she forces the listener to consider every facet of her sound without wasting a second of their time. Her self-assurance in her craft lays the foundation for an album that feels like a signature triumph.

Hit Me Hard and Soft clearly wants to make a virtue of its subtlety, a strategy that Eilish gets away with, due to the chef’s kiss production work and her lyrical zingers. (“And the internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny/ And somebody’s gotta feed it,” she sighs on Skinny.) But it would have been fun to hear this album’s “hard” edit.

On ‘HIT ME HARD AND SOFT’, it’s evident Eilish is conveying a musical restraint beyond her years, moulding a musical identity to her image and not the ephemeral pop game.

Hit Me Hard and Soft makes you marvel at how far she’s traveled as a pop artiste.

In trying to write an album for herself, she’s made one that will resonate harder than anything she's done before.

Hit Me Hard and Soft is clearly intended as something to gradually unpick: a bold move in a pop world where audiences are usually depicted as suffering from an attention deficit that requires instant gratification. Hit Me Hard and Soft isn’t in the business of providing that. In its place, it offers evidence that, among the ranks of mega-selling pop stars, Billie Eilish remains a fascinating law unto herself.

In its cohesive yet creative sound, maturity and vulnerability, what we hear is the potential of a 22-year-old musician who hopefully still has many years of artistic growth and classic songs ahead of her.

Hit Me Hard and Soft is a bold, well-crafted pop record rich with the personality of its creator, and like most such albums, it holds up just well if you take it as a face-value set of engaging, gratifying songs as if you mine it for complexity (aesthetic or lyrical).