- 2024-05-19
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MUSIC
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Billie Eilish Releases New Album “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT”
American singer-songwriter Billie Eilish released her third studio album “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT” on May 17, 2024 via Interscope Records. .
The album is her first LP in three years since the 2021 album “Happier Than Ever” and comprises a 10-track, produced by FINNEAS.
The album title is influenced by American TV “The Office” and taken from what she misheard as the name of a Logic Pro synth.
Billie Eilish started writing the album with her brother FINNEAS in October 2022.
Billie Eilish told Jack Saunders of BBC Radio 1 how she started making the album, “We started working on the album, officially, I think like October 2022, and had kind of many months of like ideas that weren't very solidified and weren't very exciting to us. We were like, I think I don't think we can choose anymore. And then I think we wrote 'SKINNY' and that kind of a woke and something in us. And then that made us right what was I made for which, then open all these doors to millions of things in terms of inspiration. And then last summer, I think in May, we wrote the greatest and then as soon as you wrote that song, the whole album just was like, falling out. And it was amazing.”- Also, Billie Eilish told triple j about approach to the album in an interview, “We just kind of, honestly we were so uninspired for so long that like, when we started working, it was kind of like, we got to start somewhere. So we have to just give up on the idea that like, it's ever gonna be perfect. And I remember just being like, I don't know what people want me to make and I don't know what I'm gonna make and I don't know, like I just was very in my head about it.”
She continued, “And I remember talking to somebody and I remember them being like, really just make like what you want to make, like, don't worry about what they want them. And that's like, such a simple that's such a classic thing people that anyone could say to you, but I was like, 'Oh, yeah. Oh, that's so true.'” - 8eVI16AOjKw
- 8eVI16AOjKw
The album features club and dance music, unlike her previous songs.
She said, “Honestly, I was at the gym all the time. And I was doing a lot of cardio. And honestly, there's not there weren't a lot of songs that were right for running and jumping rope. And I found one that I loved so much and I remember being like, wow, I wish there was some sort of way I could put this in a program and make a AI and make 800 versions. FINNEAS and I was like we need to make a song. We need to make a song that I can run to and that I can jump to and it's just like fun and like Dancy and Clubby. And there's like a lot of small moments on the album that are like that.”
Billie Eilish said of the album, “'HIT ME HARD AND SOFT' does exactly as the title suggests; hits you hard and soft both lyrically and sonically, while bending genres and defying trends along the way.”
Also she told Rolling Stone about the album, “Happier Than Ever was low-key about one person, and this album is about a lot of different situations. As songwriters, our job is to write songs about whatever we feel that we want to write songs about. That's my job. That's why I'm here.”
Billie Eilish explained about some tracks for the album.
“SKINNY” via ALT 98.7 FM
“We wrote all of 'SKINNY' and that's like the first full song that we wrote. As soon as we wrote it, we were like 'Yeah, that's the opening track.'”
“LUNCH” via Rolling Stone
“That song was actually part of what helped me become who I am, to be real, I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after. I've been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn't understand - until, last year, I realized I wanted my face in a vagina. I was never planning on talking about my sexuality ever, in a million years.”
“CHIHIRO” via Rolling Stone
“The song is loosely based off of that movie, which is one of my favorites. It's kind of from her point of view, mixed with mine. The visuals in that movie are some of the best ever - all that Studio Ghibli shit is unbelievable. There's all those visuals of the train in the water after the flood, and it literally looks like an ocean with a train track. I had just watched Spirited Away and Finneas had made that beat. I love that movie. I've seen it so many times.”
“THE GREATEST” via Rolling Stone
“'The Greatest' is the song that swooped in and saved the album, in my opinion. It saved every song on here, for real. I was in a moment of, 'I don't know, bro. I don't know if we're even going to even have an album made. I don't know if we're good at this. I don't even know if any of the ideas we have are good yet. Nothing's solidified. What the hell is going on?' I lay there and Finneas sat here, got out his little toy guitar that he uses, and started playing stuff. I remember saying something like, 'Do some staccato kind of minor chords,' and he started playing the doo-do-doo-do-doo-do-doo. Literally, all of 'The Greatest' flooded through. From then on, we started finishing songs.”
“L'AMOUR DE MA VIE” via Rolling Stone
“I'd been doing a lot of cardio circuits. Jump-roping and box-jumping and all that stuff. And I was like, 'I don't have a song I can do cardio to.' It was kind of a joke. Auto-Tune is the most fun thing. People have this idea that it's disingenuous, because they think it's, like, a tool. Absolutely it is. Fuck it. It's an aid; it helps you make the song better.”
“BITTERSUITE” via triple j
“BITTERSUITE” is one of those where… me and Finneas were just messing around, no one's ever going to hear this, and Finneas said this recently… but we kind of had this realization that the coolest, the bravest, thing we could do is just put it out exactly how we made it and not try to make it better so that people like it… We are allowed to just make it how we want to, just make it how we want to make it, and put it out. It has nothing to do with what people are going to want. It's about 'Do we enjoy this?' and 'Do we like this?'”- source : Apple Music
