the singer gains momentum again in her third album “Hit Me Hard And Soft”

In her album “Hit Me Hard And Soft”, released Friday at midnight sharp, Billie Eilish takes a more personal but still brilliant vein, between heartbreaking ballads and the science of innate pop.

At 22, it’s not uncommon to wake up one morning wondering who you really are. Billie Eilish made it the basis of her new record, Hit Me Hard And Soft, posted online Friday May 17, at 12 a.m. The young woman has already recovered from many turns and comments, her early stardom having led to a malaise already chronicled in her previous albums. Billie Eilish, who we have seen grow and transform, remains perfectly recognizable in her sound, and yet always on the margins, experimental.

The Californian singer has gotten into the habit of opening her albums with a piece that will set the tone for what follows. Here it is Skinny, a melancholy title, in which she questions her young career, the way we look at her today, and then there is love with all that it engenders. The sequel will also involve, for the first time, the affirmation of his queer identity, and his stated attraction to women.

With powerful and adventurous artists like Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey and Billie Eillish, we are living in a new golden age of pop music. Billie Eilish has continued to plow a very personal furrow since she was 17. His whispered voice is gaining more and more momentum and his music sometimes goes very far in experimentation.

For this third opus, still written and composed as a duo with his inseparable brother Finneas, we can hear a string orchestra, a novelty in their work. She recounts how they were able to indulge in this orchestral desire, Friday morning on France Inter: “We had never done that before, to use other musicians. We did everything, Finneas and I. It was very new for us, very rewarding, and it makes for broader music.” A mastery that Finneas was able to acquire by working for two or three years in the cinema with his film scores. “We would have been incapable of structuring the strings as we did in this album, recognizes the sisterif he hadn’t had this experience in cinema with orchestras.”

In reality, Billie Eilish made a third album to tell the story of who she really is today: a young woman who accepts her faults, without the oppressive pain of her beginnings. Life, love, relationships, separation, all of this is part of the lexicon of this new album. “What the world is often saying right nowdescribes Finneas on France Inter about his sister, it’s that it has improved, it has become deeper with the years.”

Having clearly participated in defining the codes of modern pop, together, the brother and sister are building a flawless, simple and brilliant, multi-faceted career, and this album is perhaps the most accomplished. With the immense talent of Billie Eilish in the middle.

We will have to wait a year to see her in France for two concerts, on June 10 and 11, 2025 at the Accor Arena in Paris.