Returning after 3 years of “hiding” from music and the transformation Happier Than Ever, the girl dubbed the “emo kid” of the music industry with unique, dark sounds that are hard to find in anyone else has made the game of 2024 unpredictable with a project that music listeners are looking forward to, especially after her revelations in the teaser: dark and suffocatingly deep.

At 0:00 on May 17 (Vietnam time),  Billie Eilish  officially released her 3rd studio album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. True to its name, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT brings a gentle, soothing musical space with Billie Eilish’s mysterious, hazy voice as if she were really sinking deep under the sea.

The hybrid of WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? and Happier Than Ever?

Produced with her brother Finneas – who co-wrote and produced her previous albums and EPs – Billie Eilish takes listeners through tracks steeped in the colors of the 80s to the synthwave sounds of the early 2000s, with a series of unconventional experiments as she and her brother have always done in previous projects. As previously revealed, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is a journey back to herself for Billie Eilish.

Before the album was released, listeners were curious about the story of the album as well as the music genre Billie Eilish would choose for BE3 (fans’ alternative spelling for her third album). When the teaser revealed a video of Billie falling through a wooden door and sinking deep into the blue water, fans exploded when they thought this was the sequel to Happier Than Ever, after the house in her music video of the same name was submerged by floodwaters, symbolizing the emotions after her relationship with male rapper Brandon Quention Adams.

However, after listening to the album, netizens said that this album strongly inherited the two previous albums – WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? and Happier Than Ever, but is also extremely different in color and its own way of exploitation.

CHIHIRO was the first song Billie wrote with her brother, but the first song completed was SKINNY.

Through the album’s title HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, Billie brings the sound of Happier Than Ever with poetic love songs, revolving around many thoughts of a young girl and questions for her lover to the new album: Can you love me forever?

The special transitions – the transitions between songs in the album – are also brought by Billie into the new product, although not as rounded and surprising as Happier Than Ever, but seem to be struggling to find new experiments. But the narrative and cinematic storytelling combined with the pounding drums of 80s music still create a smooth whole for the album.

Billie’s specialty of “smooth song transitions like sunsilk” is brought to her new album.

With the “finding herself” in this album, it is also very reasonable that Billie Eilish brings the electro-pop music and avant-pop sound – mysterious but also very heavy from WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? back to HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. She opens the album with SKINNY, a song about being complimented. Exactly, “being complimented”. Billie Eilish is praised for looking younger and more beautiful, but it is because she is thinner. The singer herself, born in 2001, also shared that before releasing the album, she had to do a lot of cardio. She is thinner, but her thoughts and soul are still Billie Eilish. In a 21-year-old body, this girl still cries silently, still smiles in front of love, and wonders about the chaos of the young generation – the hustle and bustle when social networks seek joy through toxicity, or questions about the existential crisis “Am I acting like I’m 21 years old?”.

Billie Eilish also made fans burst into tears with the song that closed the album Blue – the predecessor of the song called True Blue, which Billie revealed and performed at limited shows for audiences since 2016 and 2017. Written when she was only 15 years old, the song expresses the feeling of sadness like falling into the abyss. She describes herself as suffocating, running out of oxygen, helplessly accepting that the person she once loved has now left. However, in the 2024 version, she accepts “I can’t change him anymore”, and the stormy lyrics at the end of the song “When will I hear the next song?

This statement of hers also made fans explode with rumors that a double album will actually be released with HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, as she previously hinted when Ilomilo (a song by Billie) disappeared from the countdown for the new album. And if that is true, the 2 albums will represent Ilo (Red) – Milo (Blue), and the remaining album with the color Red will be released by Billie soon in the near future.

No longer an “emo teenager”, Billie Eilish boldly talks about the fears of growing up and the wild moments of lust.

The children of WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? are now grown up. In a short 45 minutes, Billie delivered the burning messages of a girl turning 21. After finishing the opening song, Billie made the audience “stiff” when they learned that LUNCH – the title of the second song means Lunch, is actually a reference to Billie’s pleasure when “eating” another girl.

Billie releases MV LUNCH – contrary to previous announcement that there will be no single for this album

After Happier Than Ever, an album that was conceived and released in the “smog” of the pandemic, Billie Eilish, like everyone else, had to find a way to try to be herself again when this pandemic ended. In three years, she went out again, hung out with friends, and talked more openly about sexuality and identity, all things that made her feel authentic and, for lack of a better word, “normal.” And LUNCH was one of those ways she showed her audience how she felt.

In the MV of the same name, released on May 18 (Vietnam time), the female singer also brings a minimalist image, with hip hop outfits and background colors with the sound of Y2K and 2000s music reminiscent of rappers, and songs about their girls. Billie is the same, she wants to sing about girls, and her irresistible feelings towards their charm, but still be cool and individual like men. The lyrics are not just “sexual” flirtations, it is how she finds herself, and also a way to return to the spotlight – she is older, wiser, more complete. She doesn’t want to show off or “flex”, Billie just needs to be honest with herself and her feelings.

Billie shares about the process of building an album with her brother

Alongside the ecstatic excursions, the album is also filled with softer cuts, filled with tearful breakup ballads and soft, cozy jazz sounds. The duo of Billie and Finneas intended to create the kind of album that feels like an alternate universe. On tracks like THE DINER and CHIHIRO, Eilish returns to her creative happy place from her first album, but here she strips away the haunting, gothic, dark sensibilities that have become her trademark and makes them feel fresher, sweeter.

L’AMOUR DE MA VIE transforms from a staccato jazz ballad into a joy of ecstasy and Auto-Tune, or BITTERSUITE starts as a gentle bossa nova before transforming into a dramatic cinematic soundtrack.

Billie officially released the song True Blue on the album, making longtime fans burst into tears.

Despite the heavy format, the album’s flow is effortless and meanders thanks to Billie’s clear voice. Fans are captivated by her ability to create a sound so soft it amplifies her emotions without struggling or forcing it to be portrayed.

What fans are fascinated by is how she has matured both mentally and as a writer since her new album. At the end of the Happier Than Ever MV, Billie Eilish is portrayed as being “liberated” from her toxic relationship with rapper Adams, and from there, she “suffocated” in the house that imprisoned her emotions and her personality.

Billie and Lana Del Rey at Lana’s recent Coachella show

With HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, Billie expresses sweet, cinematic and poetic lyrics that are likened to the “sad woman” Lana Del Rey: “Maybe we can’t love each other forever, but when the day comes, can we just close our eyes?” (in the song BIRDS OF A FEATHER), “Every time you touch my hand, I wonder what she thinks… When every Valentine’s Day I have to cry secretly” (in the song WILDFLOWER).

Billie once shared that she would have “died” if there was no COVID-19 vaccine.

She longs for love, but also gradually accepts that love can swallow her up. The way she sings “I don’t blame you, but I can’t change you, I don’t hate you, but we can’t save you anymore” in the song BLUE also reminds us of Taylor Swift’s song I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) in her new double album The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology. The interesting thing that both albums have in common is that they are both products to relieve themselves after a toxic past relationship and find themselves again. Taylor Swift once said that she really “needed to release” a new album for herself, while Billie Eilish also went deep inside to find the girl she used to be when she turned 21.

Could Billie Eilish Do Better On HIT ME HARD AND SOFT’s Double Album?

Billie Eilish’s HIT ME HARD AND SOFT officially climbed to No.1 on iTunes Chart Vietnam after about 8 hours of release and became the album’s 7th No.1. The album also quickly broke Taylor Swift’s record, earning a score of 95 from Metacritic, higher than the already excellent 93 for “Lord Snake” with the album The Tortured Poets Department. With positive feedback from both experts and audiences, this is clearly a strong candidate for the AOTY category at the Grammys, even though 2024 is not even half over.

Billie Eilish’s new album gets a Metascore score of 95

In addition to the compliments, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT has not yet met the expectations of many demanding fans when it is still quite shallow in terms of content, the songs only stop at “fun” songs or love songs that Billie has “elevated” from Happier Than Ever. And the truth is, with 10 songs for an album that has been awaited for 3 years, fans expect a more explosive transformation of Billie Eilish like the earthquakes WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? or Happier Than Ever once created.

Fans of Billie and Taylor suddenly “fight” each other in the battle of the charts

However, with what Billie Eilish cherishes and promises ahead, the audience may need to spend more time contemplating her worldview through HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, as many music critics describe “a rough gem”, as well as patiently wait to see what story she continues to tell in the remaining album.

Will there be a second Billie Eilish storm sweeping the Grammys?

The battle at this year’s Grammys is likely to be fiercer than ever with the participation of Billie Eilish and HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. With a unique album and a constantly changing musical personality, Billie Eilish is a leading representative of Gen Z names such as Sabrina Carpenters, Olivia Rodrigo,… She continues to maintain her own identity and style in music as well as on the charts with a series of “formidable” achievements. Fans predict that if she continues with this quality of music, the “Grammys’ darling” will be a formidable opponent for the Album Of The Year nomination.