Billie Eilish says her new album is like “coming back to the girl that I was”

Billie Eilish‘s upcoming album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT is her third album, but she says it’s a throwback to her first one.

“I feel like this album is me,” she tells Rolling Stone. “It’s not a character. It feels like the When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? version of me. It feels like my youth and who I was as a kid.”

“It was the best time of my life,” Billie says of her debut album.

“This whole process has felt like I’m coming back to the girl that I was,” she adds of making HIT ME HARD AND SOFT. “I’ve been grieving her. I’ve been looking for her in everything, and it’s almost like she got drowned by the world and the media. I don’t remember when she went away.”

The album’s also meant to be experienced as a whole, FINNEAS says, so Billie isn’t releasing any singles.

“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,” she says. “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.”

Rolling Stone notes that one track sure to inspire questions is “Lunch,” described as a “bass-heavy banger” about Billie crushing on a girl.

Regarding her sexuality, which became a headline in 2023, Billie tells Rolling Stone, “That song was actually part of what helped me become who I am, to be real. I wrote some of it before even doing anything with a girl, and then wrote the rest after. I’ve been in love with girls for my whole life, but I just didn’t understand, until last year…”