{"id":5957,"date":"2025-02-10T18:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T23:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=5957"},"modified":"2025-06-08T16:16:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T21:16:42","slug":"billie-eilish-always-delighted-in-subverting-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=5957","title":{"rendered":"Billie Eilish Always Delighted In Subverting Expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT<\/strong><\/span> still, somehow, lands like a meteor. \u201cThis is the most \u2018me\u2019 thing I\u2019ve ever made,\u201d she tells Apple Music\u2019s Zane Lowe. \u201cAnd purely me\u2014not a character.\u201d An especially wide-ranging and transportive project, even for her, it\u2019s brimming with the guts and theatricality of an artist who has the world at her feet\u2014and knows it. In a tight 45 minutes, Eilish does as she promises and hits listeners with a mix of scorching send-ups, trance excursions, and a stomping tribute to queer pleasure, alongside more soft-edged cuts like teary breakup ballads and jaunts into lounge-y jazz. But the project never feels zigzaggy thanks to, well, the Billie Eilish of it all: her glassy vocals, her knowing lyrics, her unique ability to make softness sound so huge.<\/p>\n

HIT ME<\/span><\/strong> is Eilish\u2019s third album and, like the two previous ones, was recorded with her brother and longtime creative partner FINNEAS. In conceptualizing it, the award-winning songwriting duo were intent on creating the sort of album that makes listeners feel like they\u2019ve been dropped into an alternate universe. As it happens, this universe has several of the same hallmarks as the one she famously drew up on her history-making debut, 2019\u2019s WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?. In many ways, this project feels more like that album\u2019s sequel than 2021\u2019s jazzy Happier Than Ever, which Eilish has said was recorded during a confusing, depressive pandemic haze. In the three years since, she has tried to return to herself\u2014to go outside, hang out with friends, and talk more openly about sex and identity, all things that make her feel authentic and, for lack of a better word, normal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
On Streamapse Albums To Watch, Billie Eilish with the album \u201cHit Me Hard And Soft\u201d Stream Now! Image Courtesy Of Apple Services<\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAs much as Happier Than Ever was coming from this place of, like, ‘We’re so good. This sounds so good,’ it was also not knowing at all who I was,\u2019\u201d she tells Apple Music. FINNEAS agrees, calling it their \u201cidentity crisis album.\u201d But HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is, she says, the reverse. \u201cThe whole time we were making it, we were like, ‘I don’t know if I’m making anything good, this might be terrible\u2026\u2019 But now I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I’m comfortable in who I am now.’ I feel like I know who I am now.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a songwriter, Eilish is still in touch with her vulnerabilities, but at 22, with a garage full of Grammys and Oscars, they aren\u2019t as heavy. These days it\u2019s heartache, not her own insecurities, that keeps her up at night, and the songs are juicier for it. \u201cLUNCH,\u201d a racy, bass-heavy banger that can\u2019t help but hog the spotlight, finds Eilish crushing so hard on a woman that she compares the hook-up to a meal. \u201cI\u2019ve said it all before, but I\u2019ll say it again\/I\u2019m interested in more than just being your friend,\u201d she sings. The lyrics are so much more than lewd flirtations. They\u2019re also a way of stepping back into the spotlight\u2014older, wiser, more fully herself. Read below as Eilish and FINNEAS share the inside story behind a few standout songs.<\/p>\n

\u201cLUNCH\u201d<\/span><\/strong>
\nBILLIE: \u201cOne of the verses was written after a conversation I had with a friend and they were telling me about this complete animal magnetism they were feeling. And I was like, \u2018Ooh, I’m going to pretend to be them for a second and just write…and I\u2019m gonna throw some jokes in there.\u2019 We took ourselves a little too seriously on Happier Than Ever. When you start to embrace cringe, you’re so much happier. You have so much more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBIRDS OF A FEATHER\u201d<\/span><\/strong>
\nBILLIE: \u201cThis song has that ending where I just keep going\u2014it\u2019s the highest I’ve ever belted in my life. I was alone in the dark, thinking, \u2018You know what? I’m going to try something.\u2019 And I literally just kept going higher and higher. This is a girl who could not belt until I was literally 18. I couldn’t physically do it. So I’m so proud of that. I remember coming home and being like, \u2018Mom! Listen!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWILDFLOWER\u201d<\/span><\/strong>
\nBILLIE: \u201cTo me, [the message here is] I’m not asking for reassurance. I am 100% confident that you love me. That’s not the problem. The problem is this thing that I can’t shake. It\u2019s a girl code song. It’s about breaking girl code, which is one of the most challenging places. And it isn\u2019t about cheating. It isn\u2019t about anything even bad. It was just something I couldn\u2019t get out of my head. And in some ways, this song helped me understand what I was feeling, like, \u2018Oh, maybe this is actually affecting me more than I thought.\u2019 I love this song for so many reasons. It’s so tortured and overthinky.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTHE GREATEST\u201d<\/span><\/strong>
\nBILLIE: \u201cTo us, this is the heart of the album. It completes the whole thing. Making it was sort of a turning point. Everything went pretty well after that. It kind of woke us back up.\u201d
\nFINNEAS: \u201cWhen you realize you’re willing to go somewhere that someone else isn’t, it’s so devastating. And everybody has been in some dynamic in their life or their relationship like that. When you realize that you’d sacrifice and wear yourself out and compromise all these things, but the person you’re in love with won\u2019t make those sacrifices, or isn\u2019t in that area? To me, that’s what that song is about. It’s like, you don’t even want to know how lonely this is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cL\u2019AMOUR DE MA VIE\u201d<\/strong><\/span>
\nFINNEAS: \u201cThe album is all about Billie. It’s not a narrative album about a fictional character. But we have always loved songs within songs within songs. Here, you’ve just listened to Billie sound so heartbroken in \u2018THE GREATEST,\u2019 and then she sings this song that’s like the antibody to that. It\u2019s like, \u2018You know what? Fuck you anyway.\u2019 And then she goes to the club.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBLUE\u201d<\/span><\/strong>
\n\u201cThe first quarter of \u2018BLUE\u2019 is a song Finneas and I made when I was 14 called \u2018True Blue.\u2019 We played it at little clubs before I had anything out, and never [released it] because we aged out of it. Years went by. Then, for a time, the second album was going to include one additional song called \u2018Born Blue.\u2019 It was totally different, and it didn\u2019t make the cut. We never thought about it again. Then, in 2022, I was doing my laundry and found out \u2018True Blue\u2019 had been leaked. At first I was like \u2018Oh god, they fucking stole my shit again,\u2019 but then I couldn’t stop listening. I went on YouTube and typed \u2018Billie Eilish True Blue\u2019 to find all the rips of it, because I didn’t even have the original. Then it hit us, like, \u2018Ooh, you know what’d be cool? What if we took both of these old songs, resurrected them, and made them into one?\u2019 The string motif is the melody from the bridge of \u2018THE GREATEST,\u2019 which is also in \u2018SKINNY,\u2019 which starts the album. So it also ends the album.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every product\/service is selected by editors. Products\/Services you buy through these links may earn “Streamapse” a commission or revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HIT ME HARD AND SOFT still, somehow, lands like a meteor. \u201cThis is the most \u2018me\u2019 thing I\u2019ve ever made,\u201d she tells Apple Music\u2019s Zane Lowe. \u201cAnd purely me\u2014not a character.\u201d An especially wide-ranging and transportive project, even for her, it\u2019s brimming with the guts and theatricality of an artist who has the world at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5960,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5957\/revisions\/5960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}