Billie Eilish is at the top of her game. On her third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, the 22-year-old artist delivers her innermost thoughts through the best vocals of her career that dance over FINNEAS’ revitalised production. There’s a newfound fearlessness in these songs, a freedom, and most importantly, that sense of wicked fun that ruled the artist’s debut album but had gone out of focus on the second LP, Happier Than Ever.

With no promotional singles, music videos, or social media campaigns, Eilish wanted her audience to experience the album in full for the first time as a whole, complete body of work. The opening track ‘Skinny’ picks up from the Happier Than Ever era, which wrestled with the perils of fame and ego, and serves as a fitting introspective introduction as Eilish begins to trust herself, ruminating on and ultimately letting go of heartbreak and public opinion. She then flows effortlessly into the synth-pop ‘Lunch’, the soul of the album, where she regains that carefree attitude we first fell in love with.

Observations of love, heartache, fame, and trust flow through the album as FINNEAS guides her through unchartered territory: the dark depths of the dance floor on the French disco-inspired second half of L'Amour de Ma Vie, soaring sky high on ‘Birds of a Feather’ and hitting rock bottom (while still holding compassion for herself) on ‘The Greatest’. The album comes to a heavy, thoughtful close on ‘Blue’, an elevated re-work of a song the pair wrote when Eilish was 14, called ‘True Blue’, which has been floating around the Internet for a few years, alongside a Happier Than Ever throwaway ‘Born Blue’.

The reconstruction of a song from almost a decade ago proves Eilish is wiser; her perspective is evolving. If anyone didn’t believe it already, her legacy as one of the most talented and creative voices of this generation is solidified on Hit Me Hard and Soft. It’s thoughtful, intuitive, wild, and brilliant. It’s all the best bits of Billie.

Listen to Hit Me Hard and Soft HERE.

@billieeilish