Consider us intrigued, because it turns out that the title of Billie Eilish’s upcoming third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, is derived from her mistaken belief that it’s the name of a synthesizer – or perhaps… be a synthesizer preset – in Logic Pro, the JACKDAW in which the record was made.
The revelation comes in a new Rolling Stone interview with Eilish and her brother Finneas, her co-writer and producer.
“I thought it was a perfect encapsulation of what this album does,” she says of the track. “It’s an impossible request: you can’t be hit hard or softly. You can’t do anything hard and soft at the same time. I’m quite an extremist person, and I really like it when things are very physically intense, but I also like it when things are very tender and gentle. I want two things at once. So I thought that was a really good way to describe myself, and I love that it’s not possible.
The biggest question, though – for nerds like us, anyway – is which synthesizer or preset was actually called Hit Me Hard and Soft? A search of Logic Pro’s sound library turns up no obvious candidates; There are presets with both “hard” and “soft” in their titles, but none with both.
Could Eilish have been referring to the name of an Apple Loop, then? Again, a search turns up nothing, although there are various “thumping” bass and drum loops.
So we can only assume that if it’s not a canned name that Eilish or Finneas came up with themselves, it came from a third-party plugin that both men were using.
So, let’s open it up for you: do you know any factory synthesizer preset names that someone might confuse with Hit Me Hard and Soft? If the answer is yes, let us know and we can all move on with our lives.
Another thing we learn from the interview is that Hit Me Hard And Soft has more in common with Eilish’s debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, than with her follow-up, Happier Than Ever .
“I feel like this album is me,” Eilish explains. “He’s not a character. It sounds like When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? version of me. It sounds like my youth and who I was as a child.
On her decision not to release any singles from the new album, Eilish said: “I don’t like singles from albums. Whenever an artist I like releases a single without the context of the album, I already tend to hate it. I really don’t like it when things are out of context. This album is like a family: I don’t want a little child to be alone in the middle of the room.
You’ll be able to hear the sound of “family” when Hit Me Hard and Soft releases on May 17.
