Rave reviews for ‘bold, brilliant’ Billie Eilish

Critics have been very upbeat about Billie Eilish’s “surprising and intimate” third studio album, Hit Me Hard And Soft, which was released on Friday.

The star wrote on Instagram that she and her brother and collaborator, Finneas O’Connell, “put so much into this album and have never ever ever loved something more”.

It comes after they won their second Oscar, for What Was I Made For? from the Barbie soundtrack earlier this year.

The Telegraph called the album “explicit, sapphic and her best work yet”, while The Times said it was “confident and non-conformist”.

Variety’s Chris Williams said Eilish had kept up her “winning streak with the surprising and intimate” release.

He praised “albums that really feel like albums”, likening Eilish’s latest offering to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Artists Department.

Williams called them “collections you want to immerse yourself in, not because the artists in question imperiously demand it – although they kinda do – but because these are women who know how to world-build”.

The NME’s Thomas Smith called Eilish’s work “bold, brilliant and somewhat brighter” than before, adding that it “remains distinctly unique, a portrait of a singular talent entering young adulthood, exploring her queerness and experiencing the emotional thrill and (sometimes) catastrophe of chasing passion or falling in love.

“In trying to write an album for herself, she’s made one that will resonate harder than anything she’s done before.”

The Telegraph’s Neil McCormick gave it five stars and high praise, saying: “The young superstar’s sensual heartbreak masterpiece is great enough to stand alongside Joni Mitchell’s Blue.”

In The Times, Will Hodkinson said she “borrows stylistic touches from decades past while singing about coming out, body issues and lesbian lust”.

He wrote that the “sweet love song” Skinny Skinny “deals with other people’s concerns about her weight, feeling like a bird in a cage the moment she comes off stage, and the possibility that she may have already passed her career peak”.

Writing in the Financial Times, Ludovic Hunter-Tilney added that the “singer’s music is energised by her push-pull relationship with fame”.

“Lunch is a smoothly dynamic track about sex whose food imagery cancels the self-denying language of Skinny”, he said, while “Blue narrates the end of a relationship with masterly switch-ups in beats and vocals”.

‘Marvellous maze of music’

The Independent’s Helen Brown gave the album five stars, saying: “Eilish lifted the title of Hit Me Hard and Soft from the name of a sound effect in ProTool’s audio software kit.

“It’s a perfect fit for a record that whispers its way through a marvellous maze of music to deliver some big emotional wallops.”

Meanwhile Alexis Petridis in The Guardian, giving the album four stars, said it “keeps wrongfooting the listener”.

It is “clearly intended as something to gradually unpick: a bold move in a pop world where audiences are usually depicted as suffering from an attention deficit that requires instant gratification”, he added.

Hannah Daily, writing in Billboard, said Eilish’s “latest set finds her fully in possession of the narrative maturity she was grasping at on her 2021 sophomore effort Happier Than Ever”.

She added: “But with gothic allusions to death and criminal activity on songs like Birds of a Feather and The Diner, and shades of blue adding darker dimension to even the happiest moments on the album, the project also makes good on the star’s promise that this album would mark a return to the charms of her number one hit… When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?”