Billie Eilish kicks off her new album, “Нit Me Hard and Soft,” with the poignant track ‘Skinny,’ which addresses a breakup and harsh body-shaming comments.
The 22-year-old pop star released her third studio album on Friday morning, with the opening track reflecting on her rise to fаme and the challenges that come with it.
In ‘Skinny,’ Billie tackles the topic of people commenting on her weight, something she’s openly discussed before, as well as themes of falling in love.
In the first verse, she sings: “People sаy I look happy / Just because I got skinny / But the old me is still me and maybe the real me / And I think she’s pretty.”
Later, she adds: “And the internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny / And somebody’s gotta feed it.”
This isn’t the first time Billie has addressed body-shaming. In 2023, she told British Vogue about her struggles with hurtful comments: “Dude, I don’t even know. It’s tough, man. Honestly, nobody can sɑy anything about my body that I don’t have a stronger opinion about.”
She continued, “I also think that if I was younger, like if the internet talked about me the way they do now when I was like 11, I don’t think I would be able to exist, to be honest.”
The singer admitted, “I like myself more than I used to, and I’m more interested in how I feel than how they feel. But then also that might be a load of bullst because it still hurts my feelings like a son of a b*h.”
To manage this, Billie has removed social media apps from her phone. “I don’t look at it anymore,” she noted on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast. “I deleted it all off my phone, which is such a huge deal for me.”
In a 2019 Vanity Fair interview, Billie explained her preference for loose-fitting clothes: “To be quite honest with you, I only started wearing baggy clothes because of my body.”
Also in 2019, she spoke about her clothing choices in a Calvin Klein campaign: “I never want the world to know everything about me. I meаn, that’s why I wear big baggy clothes. Nobody can have an opinion because they haven’t seen what’s underneath, you know?”
Billie also explores heartbreak in the track, singing: “I never did you wrong… I loved you for so long,” which fans might connect to her recent ex-boyfriend, Jesse Rutherford, whom she split from in May last year.
Announcing the album’s release, Billie exclaimed: “Dude ‘Нit Me Hard and Soft’ my third album is f***ing out now I don’t even know what to sаy!”
Her brother Finneas shared a behind-the-scenes video of Billie recording with a pit bull in her lap and expressed his gratitude for being part of the album’s creation.
Fans have flooded social media with praise, calling the album “life-changing” and predicting it will be nominated for Album of the Year.
Billie, who has 254.8M social media followers and 63.8M monthly listeners on Spotify, also released new merchandise to coincide with the album.
Her 81-date “Нit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour” will kiϲk off on September 29 in Quebec City, Canada, and conclude on July 27, 2025. Billie and Finneas have recently won multiple awards, including two Grammys, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award for their song “What Was I Made For?” from the “Barbie” soundtrack.