Billie Eilish explains why she’s not releasing singles from new album
Ahead of the release of her upcoming third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, Billie Eilish has explained why she won’t be sharing any singles from the LP.
The new record, set to arrive on May 17th through Interscope Records, but fans of the superstar artist will have to wait for the release date to hear any of the songs that feature on the project. While this approach is becoming less unconventional, and Taylor Swift recently used the method for her new album, The Tortured Poets Department, it’s still a brave choice by Eilish.
In the modern era, TikTok has become the primary gatekeeper for pop music, and trends on the platform dictate the charts. For Finneas, Eilish’s brother and collaborator, the decision is a retaliation to the music industry’s obsession with 15-second loops.
“We’re not even at ‘song’ anymore,” he told Rolling Stone in a new interview. “We’re at the line from the second verse that blew up on TikTok. We’re mostly watching content in vertical that was made an hour ago — some person telling you their thoughts about something from an hour ago.”
Finneas drew parallels with the success of Barbie and Oppenheimer last year, which dragged the masses back to the cinema, noting, “Everything’s a counter-movement to the movement. I think that’s going to lead back to immersing yourself in an album. I really do.”
Meanwhile, Eilish explained how the decision was born out of a personal preference to hear every song as part of a larger body of work, stating, “I don’t like singles from albums. Every single time an artist I love puts out a single without the context of the album, I’m just already prone to hating on it. I really don’t like when things are out of context. This album is like a family: I don’t want one little kid to be in the middle of the room alone.”
Providing hints about what should be expected from Hit Me Hard and Soft, Eilish claimed that the opening track, ‘Lunch’, which finds her doting over a woman, is a “total false promise”. Elaborating, she continued, “It really is the kill-the-main-character-type beat. It’s like Drew Barrymore being in the first five minutes of Scream and then they kill her. You’re like, ‘They can’t kill Drew. Oh, my God, they killed Drew!’”
The reinvention of Eilish as she enters the third chapter of her story is now less than a month away, and anticipation couldn’t be higher. While most artists need to release a string of singles to create hype for a pending release, she only needs to share an 18-second trailer to get tongues wagging.
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