In recent months, Billie Eilish has been discreet. The whole world was moved last summer by listening to his ballad What Was I Made For?, specially designed for the Barbie soundtrack. Some 40,000 lucky people were able to see it in Paris, at the opening of the Rock en Seine festival, last August. Since then, everyone has been impatiently awaiting the arrival of his third album. It is finally here and, unsurprisingly, was unanimously accepted.
In recent months, music fans have been generously served. Beyoncé took to country, Dua Lipa prepared the summer hits and Taylor Swift delivered a poetic album lasting almost two hours. The bar was high for Billie Eilish, 22, who was preparing to unveil her third album, titled Hit Me Hard and Soft. Unlike her three counterparts, the young American refrained from giving fans a few preview singles. Friday May 17, the whole world discovered his new album made up of ten tracks, with a total duration of 43 minutes.
Just five years after the release of her first studio album, Billie Eilish already has millions of fans and billions of streams across all platforms. But “it’s not because she became a superstar that she abandoned her singularity, quite the contrary,” says Olivier Nuc of Le Figaro.
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The singer continues to explore universal themes like sexuality, physical appearance, doubts and coming of age. All written and produced with his brother Finneas, who has been there since the beginning. “Why change a method that has touched so many listeners, after all?” continues the journalist, for whom Hit Me Hard and Soft is undoubtedly their “best production”.
“Uncertainty sung brilliantly”, “macabre and haunting pop”… The French press is unanimous: Billie Eilish is a global star but above all “a young woman who accepts her faults”, admits Yann Bertrand at France Info . The album is not perfect but is shaped in its image. It is dark and haunting. ““Birds of a Feather” is a pop marvel, the folk atmospheres of “Wildflower”, the electro programming of “Chihiro”. And also the melancholic arpeggio of “The Greatest”, and its whispered song, in one breath, which suddenly takes on electricity and barely contained rage,” concludes Olivier Nuc.
In an interview with France Inter, Billie Eilish returned to the notion of silence. “Every time I let silence work, I am always rewarded internally. And musically, silence is an element that Finneas and I play with a lot, explains the singer. It is not always necessary to have a grade. Silence is fragility. It shows that you don’t fall into banality.”
“What is most striking is that Eilish does not seek to make big statements […] as these other artists do,” we can read in the columns of the American magazine Variety. Nor does it seem like she or her brother/co-writer/producer Finneas are seeking world domination.”
The American duo is content to embody “everything that is missing in pop today: uncertainty sung brilliantly,” exclaims Libération. As for Inrockuptibles, the criticism is more nuanced, still praising this album “which goes against the grain of its American peers”. “In the great arena of pop entertainment, depression is an unstoppable communication tool, and Eilish understands this well,” explains Sophie Rosemont in the columns of the magazine. Nothing new, then, under the Billie Eilish moon, but nothing boring either.”
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Eric Bureau, journalist at Le Parisien, seems of the same opinion. “When we close the album, we understand its title, “Hit me hard and soft” […] It sums up its content quite well, full of contrasts, he explains. We bet that it will be less successful than the first, sold 30 million copies worldwide (including 350,000 in France), but more than the second, “Happier Than Ever”, released in 2021, which abounded in “ideas and melodies.”
One thing is certain, Billie Eilish will come to defend her new album at the start of the school year. A long world tour of more than 80 dates will follow. The singer will make a detour to Europe, notably to Paris, where she will perform twice, on June 10 and 11, 2025, at the Accor Arena in Bercy. No big news for the American who has already celebrated her album Happier Than Ever in this emblematic venue of the capital, in June 2022.