“Hit Me Hard and Soft”: an album for the record books 

A dreamy soundscape accompanied by wispy vocals starts, enticing listeners. With sounds of harps, gentle beats, and violins, reveal simply powerful and real lyrics that talk about romantic loss and body image. With a seamless transition, the first song of the album, “Skinny,” blends into the second song, “Lunch,” which is the polar opposite in terms of atmosphere. With catchy beats and lyrics, it’s completely different from “Skinny,” but it fits in perfectly in the album. 

These songs are just two of the ten in Billie Eilish’s new album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.” The 44-minute album takes listeners and fans on a rollercoaster of emotions with intense themes and concepts, with some songs having bold elements and others more subtle. Eilish shows vulnerability, love, regret, insecurities, and so many more heartbreaking emotions, truly hitting fans hard and soft. 

Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, co-wrote and produced the album, finally publishing it after brainstorming ideas for this release since December 2021.  

Released on May 17, 2024, “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” is Eilish’s highest-performing yet, with about 72.7 million streams just on the day of release. Within the first week, the album received more than 500 million global streams.  

Eilish’s fourth track on the album, “Birds of a Feather,” has gone viral all over social media, frequently used in posts and videos. At the 2024 Olympics Closing Ceremony, Eilish and O’Connell performed a rendition of the song. It is one of the largest hits in the collection. 

My personal favorites of the album are “Skinny,” and “The Diner,” though all of the songs are truly catchy, and artistic in their ways. “The Diner,” is one of the more unique tracks in the album, with an almost cafe-jazz-like opening. It is so memorable and one I always go back to listen to. 

“People say I look happy/Just because I got skinny/But the old me is still me and maybe the real me/And I think she’s pretty,” Eilish wrote. It is one of my favorite lyrics in the album. The songs are so raw, and pure and have listeners in awe from the very beginning to the end. 

I would recommend this album to absolutely anyone, even if indie pop isn’t their style. It is a mostly mellow and sad album, but listeners of any kind will be able to hear a song that speaks to them. On an A-F scale, I rate “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” an A.