NME乐评｜Billie Eilish新专辑《Hit Me Hard and Soft》：大胆、精彩且有点明亮

Billie Eilish – ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ review: bold, brilliant and somewhat brighter 16th May 2024 from NME The last time NME spoke to Billie Eilish, change was afoot. On the eve of her massive Glastonbury headline appearance in 2022, she said that she was “trying to find myself again” and that she “felt pretty trapped in the persona that people had of me”. Identity crises are not uncommon in Billie’s career; in fact, they’ve provided much of its motor. 2019’s zeitgeist-busting debut ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’ encapsulated the pre-pandemic Gen Z experience: it was anxious and uncertain about growing up, and revolutionary in its abrasive, bedroom-pop sound. Then came ‘Happier Than Ever’, a sprawling – if somewhat kitschy – epic that was aesthetically inspired by old-school cool and classic songwriters like Julie London. She swapped her baggy, neon clothing for pin-up dresses and bleach blonde hair. 上一次NME采访Billie Eilish时，变化就发生了。在2022年她在格拉斯顿伯里的头条新闻发布会前夕，她说她“正在努力重新找回自己”，她“觉得自己被人们对我的印象所束缚”。身份危机在Billie的职业生涯中并不罕见；事实上，他们提供了它的大部分发动机。2019年打破时代精神的首秀《When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?》概括了疫情前Z世代的经历：它对成长感到焦虑和不确定，卧室里刺耳的流行音乐具有革命性。然后是《Happier Than Ever》，这是一部庞大的史诗之作，虽然有点俗气，但在美学上受到了Julie London等老派酷炫经典词曲作者的启发。她把宽松的霓虹灯衣服换成了扎眼的连衣裙和淡色的金发。 No wonder, then, that in 2023 the 22 year-old was ruminating on ‘What Was I Made For?’, her Oscar-winning contribution to the Barbie soundtrack. “Think I forgot how to be happy / Something I’m not, but something I can be”, she purred, a song supposedly about Margot Robbie’s titular character but was as much directed at its creator. Who was Billie Eilish, it pondered, and what was her purpose? Disruptive force anointed as a leader for her environmental-wary generation, or simply another young person trying to find their place in the world? 难怪在2023年，这位22岁的年轻人在沉思“What Was I Made For?”，她为《芭比》配乐的奥斯卡获奖贡献。“我想我忘记了如何快乐了/有些我不是，但有些我可以”，她轻声说道，这首歌据说是关于玛戈特·罗比的有名无实的角色，但同样是针对创作者的。Billie Eilish是谁，它沉思着，她的目的是什么？颠覆性力量被任命为她对环境持谨慎态度的一代的领导者，还是仅仅是另一个试图在世界上找到自己位置的年轻人？ ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ is a portrait of who she is now, and who she could go on to become. The album’s no-single rollout and occasional snippets – either at Coachella DJ sets or in Heartstopper soundtracks – have offered few clues, and a Rolling Stone profile offered, well, perhaps a little too much for some people’s tastes. But still, it was clear that she wanted to get personal: “This whole process has felt like I’m coming back to the girl I was [in 2019]. I’ve been grieving her. This isn’t an album about happiness, but there’s at least glimmers of the full human experience for once. 《Hit Me Hard and Soft》是她现在的写照，也是她未来的写照。这张专辑没有推出任何单曲，偶尔在科切拉音乐节的 DJ 表演或 Heartstopper 原声带中出现的片段也没有提供什么线索，而《滚石》杂志的一篇人物专访则提供了，嗯，也许会不对某些人的口味。但很明显，她还是想谈谈自己的个人感受："整个过程让我感觉自己又回到了[2019年]那个女孩的样子。我一直在为她悲伤。这不是一张关于幸福的专辑，但至少有一次闪烁着人类完整经历的光芒。 ‘Skinny’ follows Eilish’s trend of using the opening track to set the table for the rest of the album. First there was the 13-second goofy skit ‘!!!!!!!’ on her debut, encapsulating how it feels to make an album at home with your best pal, older brother Finneas. Then ‘Happier Than Ever’’s curtain-raiser ‘Getting Older’, was a wistful, sighing opener about how it feels to grow up as the most talked-about teenager on the planet 《Skinny》沿袭了 Eilish 用开场曲为专辑其他部分做铺垫的一贯风格。在她的首张专辑中，首先出现的是 13 秒的呆萌短剧《!!!!!!!》，概括了与好兄弟Finneas一起在家制作专辑的感受。然后是《Happier Than Ever》的开场曲《Getting Older》，这首歌充满了思念和叹息，讲述了作为这个星球上最受关注的青少年的成长感受。 This time, it’s about confidence and self-reflection: “People say I look happy, just because I got skinny / But the old me is still me, maybe the real me, and I think she’s pretty”. She soon engages with her own narrative much like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande did on their recent albums: “Am I acting my real age now? Am I already on the way down? When I step off stage I’m a bird in a cage and a dog in a dog pound”. It finishes with a gorgeous orchestral flourish akin to her work on Bond song ‘No Time To Die’ with Hans Zimmer. It’s a superb song, one of her best ever. 这一次，是关于自信和自我反思：“人们说我看起来很开心，只是因为我瘦了/但旧的我仍然是我，也许是真实的我，我觉得她很漂亮”。她很快就开始讲述自己的故事，就像Taylor Swift and 和Ariana Grande在他们最近的专辑中所做的那样：“我的行为是否与自己真实的年龄相称吗？我已经在走下坡路了吗？当我走下舞台时，我是笼子里的鸟，狗窝里的狗”。它以华丽的管弦乐结束，类似于她与Hans Zimmer合作的邦德歌曲《No Time To Die》。这是一首美妙的歌曲，是她有史以来最好的歌曲之一。 ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’, then, is undeniably brighter in sound and more confident in its execution. ‘Lunch’ is a return to the same pulsing beat of ‘Bad Guy’ and ‘Bury A Friend’, interspersing a guitar riff with the same type of ravey beats she dabbled with tentatively on second album deep cut ‘Oxytocin’. ‘Lunch’ is explicit, too, in Eilish’s “cravings” for the first time, particularly since she’s spoken more openly about embracing her queer identity: “I could eat that girl for lunch / Yeah, she dances on my tongue / Tastes like she might be the one”. 不可否认，《Hit Me Hard and Soft》在音色上更加明亮，在执行上更加自信。《Lunch》回归了《Bad Guy》和《Bury A Friend》的节奏，在吉他旋律中穿插了她在第二张专辑《Oxytocin》中尝试过的狂欢节奏。《Lunch》也首次明确表达了Eilish的 "渴望"，尤其是在她公开承认自己的双性恋身份之后："我可以把那个女孩当午餐吃掉/是的，她在我的舌头上跳舞/尝起来她可能就是我的真命天女"。 ‘Birds of Feather’ is a love song written from the perspective of someone who finally knows how it feels to be valued, though it might not be the happy ending she wants. Amidst one of her best vocal performances, she is devastated even if she doesn’t quite sound it: “I don’t know what I’m crying for, I don’t think I could love you more”. ‘The Greatest’ is a sequel to ‘Happier Than Ever’’s title track, a subtle build that explodes with a guitar solo ending and yearning; this time, the explosive rage is replaced with thankless acts of service to keep a partner interested. 《Birds of Feather》是一首情歌，从一个终于知道被重视是什么感觉的人的角度写的，尽管这可能不是她想要的幸福结局。在她最好的声乐表演之一中，她被摧毁了，即使她听起来不太好:“我不知道我在哭什么，我感觉我不能更爱你了。”《The Greatest》是《Happier Than Ever》主打歌的续集，以吉他独奏结尾和渴望迸发出微妙的旋律;这一次，吃力不讨好的服务行为取代了爆炸性的愤怒，以保持伴侣的兴趣。 What makes ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ so enjoyable is its ruthlessness – the 10 tracks are the fewest she’s had on an album, but they’re just as experimental and playful as her previous work. ‘L’Amour De La Vie’ – Love of My Life – starts off with a smokey, Laufey-esque vocal delivery, then flips into ‘Blinding Lights’-aping ‘80s synth pop. ‘Blue’, meanwhile, has something of Lana Del Rey’s ‘A&W’ in its willingness to flip the script and straddle two distinctly different sonic universes, from radio-friendly pop-rock, to sparse, murky electronic beats. Few moments are wasted, though ‘Bittersuite’ exists mainly as a production flex for Billie and Finneas, and ‘The Diner’ is quirky, if somewhat pedestrian next to some of these songwriting odysseys. 《Hit Me Hard and Soft》之所以欣赏性高，是因为它的无情——这10首曲目是她专辑中最少的，但它们和她之前的作品一样实验性和趣味性。《我的生活之爱》（L’Amour De La Vie）以一首烟熏的、Laufey风格的声乐开始，然后演变成了模仿80年代合成流行音乐的《Blinding Lights》与此同时，《Blue》有点像Lana Del Rey的《A&W》，它愿意翻转剧本，跨越两个截然不同的声音世界，从适合广播的流行摇滚到稀疏、模糊的电子节拍。尽管《Bittersuite》主要是作为Billie和Finneas的制作灵活性而存在，但几乎没有浪费时间，《The Diner》也很古怪，尽管与这些歌曲创作之旅相比有些平淡。 Billie came into this process with aspirations to find herself, creatively and personally: ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ 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. Billie 带着在创意和个人方面找到自我的愿望进入了这个过程：《Hit Me Hard and Soft》仍然非常独特，描绘了一位进入成年期的奇异天才，探索她的酷儿并体验情感上的刺激和（有时）追逐激情或坠入爱河的灾难。在试图为自己写一张专辑时，她制作了一张比她以前做过的任何事情都更能引起共鸣的专辑。

公 众 号：琐简