Billie Eilish has always delighted in subverting expectations, but HIT ME HARD AND SOFT still, somehow, lands like a meteor. An especially wide-ranging and transportive project, even for her, it’s brimming with the guts and theatricality of an artist who has the world at her feet—and knows it. In a tight 45 minutes, Eilish does as she promises and hits listeners with a mix of scorching send-ups, trance excursions, and a stomping tribute to queer pleasure, alongside more soft-edged cuts like teary breakup ballads and jaunts into lounge-y jazz. But the project never feels zigzaggy thanks to, well, the Billie Eilish of it all: her glassy vocals, her knowing lyrics, her unique ability to make softness sound so huge. HIT ME is Eilish’s third album and, like the two previous ones, was recorded with her brother and longtime creative partner FINNEAS. In conceptualizing it, the award-winning songwriting duo were intent on creating the sort of album that makes listeners feel like they’ve been dropped into an alternate universe. As it happens, this universe has several of the same hallmarks as the one she famously drew up on her history-making debut, 2019’s WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?. In many ways, this project feels more like that album’s sequel than 2021’s jazzy Happier Than Ever, which Eilish has said was recorded during a confusing, depressive pandemic haze. In the three years since, she has tried to return to herself—to go outside, hang out with friends, and talk more openly about sex and identity, all things that make her feel authentic and, for lack of a better word, normal. It seems to be working. On songs like “THE DINER” and “CHIHIRO,” Eilish seeps back into her creative happy place, dusting off those haunting, gothic, dark sensibilities that became her trademark and making them feel bigger and new. Elsewhere, she uses those core soundscapes as a launching pad to veer off into surprising new directions: “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE” morphs from a staccato jazz ballad into a joyride of trance and Auto-Tune, and “BITTERSUITE” begins as a low-key bossa nova song before cascading into a wall of giant cinematic synths. As a songwriter, Eilish is still in touch with her vulnerabilities, but at 22, with a garage full of Grammys and Oscars, they aren’t as heavy. These days it’s heartache, not her own insecurities, that keeps her up at night, and the songs are juicier for it. “LUNCH,” a racy, bass-heavy banger that can’t help but hog the spotlight, finds Eilish crushing so hard on a woman that she compares the hook-up to a meal. “I’ve said it all before, but I’ll say it again/I’m interested in more than just being your friend,” she sings. The lyrics are so much more than lewd flirtations. They’re also a way of stepping back into the spotlight—older, wiser, more fully herself.