The cover for 22-year-old Billie Eilish’s third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, shows her descending (it would seem) into deep water after falling through a door above her.
It’s a strikingly apt image. Hit Me Hard and Soft feels immersive and saturated. At times, Eilish’s unique strong-but-delicate voice almost sounds like it’s underwater—and that we, her listeners—have plunged into the emotional depths with her.
I suspect few would quickly compare Eilish with her decade-older contemporary, Taylor Swift. Eilish plays the foil of the alt-goth kid to Swift’s awe-shucks girl next door.
Album opener “Skinny” reflects on the tension between others’ thoughts about Eilish’s weight and her own point of view: “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.”
That track also reflects on the fickle nature of celebrity (“Am I already on the way out?/When I step off the stage/I’m a bird in a cage”). It also suggests that the online world’s appetite for scandal is insatiable (“And the Internet is hungry/For the meanest kind of funny/And somebody’s gotta feed it”).
While Eilish is known for her skewering cynicism and sarcasm, some moments here feel surprisingly earnest, such as her plea for lasting love on “Birds of a Feather”: “I don’t think I could love you more/It might not be for long, baby, I/I’ll love you ‘til the day I die.”
Several other songs try to make sense of disappointment and loss in the wake of broken romantic relationships (“Chihiro,” “The Greatest,” “L’Amour de Ma Vie”).
“The Diner” offers unsettling commentary on celebrity stalkers, and it’s written from the perspective of the stalker: “I saw you on the screens/I know we’re meant to be/You’re starring in my dreams/In magazines/You’re looking right at me.”
In late 2023, Eilish came out as gay. Only, she thought everyone already knew: “But I kind of thought, ‘Wasn’t it obvious?’ I didn’t realize people didn’t know.”
That personal detail is relevant here because Eilish sings repeatedly about lust and love for other women throughout (a fact that likely influences the way we hear some of the lyrics about love in included in the previous section).
“Lunch” is startlingly ribald as Eilish sings about wanting to perform oral sex on another woman. Some lyrics are too explicit to include here, but it’s worth noting that Eilish says, “It’s a craving, not a crush.”
Likewise, “Wildflower” seems to describe a deeply dysfunctional love-and-sex triangle among three women. We hear lines such as, “And I wonder/Do you see her in the back of your mind?/In my eyes?” A suggestive reference to nakedness turns up on “The Greatest” as well.
On “Chihiro,” we hear about a disappointed lover who perhaps hints at suicide (“And you tell me it’s all been a trap/And you don’t know if you’ll make it back”), prompting Eilish to respond, “I say, ‘No. Don’t say that.’”
There’s a passing allusion to reincarnation (albeit one that’s likely intended metaphorically) in “Birds of a Feather”: “I knew you in another life/You had that same look in your eyes.”
“The Greatest” is a melancholy song chronicling a dying relationship: “And we don’t have to fight/When it’s not worth fighting for.” The song also hints that a couple is cohabitating.
More suggestive innuendo turns up in “Bittersuite”: “I see the way you want me/I wanna be the one/ … Can’t sleep, have you underneath/ … Keep me off my feet.”
We hear the album’s lone profanity, an s-word, on “Birds of a Feather.”
It’s impossible to know for sure how autobiographical any given artist’s songs truly are. That said, Hit Me Hard and Soft has the feel of something that’s deeply personal and revealing. Billie Eilish paints a complicated and layered self-portrait here of a woman longing for love and deeply aware of the ways she’s had her heart broken … and how she’s broken others’ hearts.
Eilish doesn’t play coy when it comes to the fact that she identifies as a lesbian. “Lunch,” in particular, is shockingly shameless in its depiction of Eilish’s female-focused sexual appetites.
The fact that Eilish sings so matter-of-factly about her same-gender attraction offers stark evidence of how far our mainstream culture has walked down this path when it comes to all things LGBT. It’s hard to imagine such plainspoken same-sex fantasizing from a mainstream pop star even five years ago. I suspect many—including some young people quietly grappling with this issue in their own lives—will hear a deep affirmation of that path here.
That perspective, combined at certain points with other suggestively sensual lyrics, is certainly one of the big stories here–especially for families who might have young fans of Billie Eilish. Those moments offer more than enough reason to hit the pause button on streaming Eilish’s latest, as she veers diametrically from God’s intended design for sexual intimacy between a man and woman in covenantal marriage.
We could easily stop right there. But I think we need to press just a bit deeper.
As I listened to each track here—just as was the case on when I reviewed Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department—I hear brokenness and longing, a deep desire for intimacy and meaning and connection. Yes, I respectfully believe Billie’s looking for that love in, as the old song says, all the wrong places. But her heart and yearning to know and be known is achingly, painfully present almost from start to finish.
Billie Eilish may not know it—and she (as well as many others, I suspect) might mock me for saying it—but she’s looking for God, looking for a kind of love only He can give her.
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
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