The initial figures for 'Hit Me Hard and Soft' have just been published and place Billie Eilish's third album in third place for biggest debuts in Spotify history. Only Taylor Swift with 'The Tortured Poets Department' and Beyoncé with 'Cowboy Carter' surpass it in listeners, although the truth is that they contain double or even triple the number of songs. The merit is greater for Billie because only 10 cuts of 'Hit Me Hard and Soft' exceed 70 million global listens. Here are the positions of all the tracks from 'Hit Me Hard and Soft' in Spotify's global top 50 (via ATRL):
#2 LUNCH 10,785,324
#3 CHIHIRO 10,051,791
#7 SKINNY 7,969,974
#8 BIRDS OF A FEATHER 7,969,100
#11 WILDFLOWER 6,821,322
#15 L'AMOUR DE MA FRIE 6,235,946
#16 THE GREATEST 6,230,104
#18 BLUE 5,935,478
#19 THE DINER 5,449,453
#21 BITTERSUITE 5,277,647
Here are the 10 biggest debuts in Spotify history (via Spotify Daily Data):
#1 THE TORTURED POETS DEPT. 314.5M
#2 COWBOY CARTER 76.6M
#3 #HITMEHARDANDSOFT 72.7M*
#4 WE DON'T TRUST YOU 59.3M
#5 Eternal Sunshine 59.1M
#6 Vultures 1 57.5M
#7 american dream 42.1M
#8 WE STILL DON'T TRUST YOU 36.2M
#9 Might Delete Later 29.4M
#10 2093 21.9M
Billie Eilish's new album has just hit the market confident that it offers a whole more valuable than any single single. Actually, 'Hit Me Hard and Soft' is an album varied in styles, although Billie once again brings together a series of compositions that bear her signature one hundred percent, and the same can be said of Finneas and the work of her to production.
The title of 'Hit Me Hard and Soft' alludes to the album's tendency to alternate soft rhythms with harder ones. There are no hard moments on the album like 'I Didn't Change My Number', from the previous one, but there are other things.
Among them is the one who can be considered the new 'bad guy' in rhythm and spirit. 'Lunch' uses a prominent bass and an uptempo rhythm close to dance-punk, to make the most danceable cut on the album. It's today's Song Of The Day.
Billie, who, in recent times, has come out of the closet and, specifically, has declared that she wants to have her face glued to a vagina, dedicates 'Lunch' to a girl she wants to sink her teeth into. She sings it herself: “I could eat that girl for lunch.” The girl “knows” so well that what she feels seems to Billie as love. She thinks her girl is “the one.”
A song called 'Lunch' that explores a sexual theme could only leave a string of sexually suggestive phrases in its lyrics. But they are not that suggestive. Friends, Billie is horny as a monkey. If the girl wants to sit, she “offers to be the seat.” In the video clip she directly points at her face. Billie even imagines that she is the “deer” and her girl is the “lighthouse,” animalizing herself, allowing herself to be run over. “Do you know how to bend?” she asks at another point in the lyrics. It's the literal sense, the figurative is that Billie no longer resists her desires.
The lyrics of 'Lunch' are obvious, and so is its punk sound, but that's the grace and freshness that Billie offers on 'Lunch'. It's exactly the same grace and freshness that led 'bad guy' to become a huge hit. It can happen again.
