Curse of the third album

Billy Ailish released a new plate - “Hit Me Soft and Hard”. Did she manage to re-make herself in time for her?

Billy Ailish released her third album - Hit Me Soft and Hard. Unlike other first-order pop stars, which recorded many hours of longplai this year, Billy introduced a record of only ten songs. However, in them she was able to experiment plentifully - her new songs can be called suits in which one style of performance is sharply replaced by another. Musical critic Lev Gankin tells what the “third album syndrome” is-and whether Billy Ailish, like Madonna once, managed to overcome him.

“Iʼm True Blue”, ”Billy Ailish repeats in the final composition from the album“ Hit Me Soft and Hard ”over and over again. This is far from the only idiomatic expression that the singer uses in a new entry: next door to “True Blue” (“Persistent, devoted”) are found “Birds of a Feather” (“One Berry Field”), Deer in the Headlights ( "Ostolobenki, with bulging eyes") and a few more quotes from the dictionary English phraseological units. But, it seems, the case of “True Blue” is the most interesting and ambiguous.

The literal interpretation of what was said here is quite appropriate: among the romantic paths, which Ailish virtuiously lushing in the ten new songs, there are also paths about the absolute, all -conquering fidelity; In another composition, “Birds of a feather”, with a direct text, is sung about love to the grave board. However, in pop music, the phrase “True Blue” cannot but provoke an additional association-with the 1986 Madonna album of the same name . It was her third full -format recording; This is the third longpley Billy Ailish.

Musicians usually mythologize the second albums. Even the corresponding “syndrome” was included in the everyday music practice - they say, after a bright debut, the decline is inevitable when the artist is in front of the fork: whether to try the recipe that has again worked out again or take a chance and turn off the way. Ailish has this stage behind: two years after the debut of the debut of the debut , “Will We All Fall Asleep, Were Do We Go?” (2019) She released the “Happier than Ever” plate (2021), in which she appeared in the appropriate moment of a broken state. Still a teenage girl-but in an adult body and with the interests of physical and psychological growth in accordance with the interests. Still, first of all, the beloved daughter and younger sister (Ailish traditionally writes with his brother, Finneas Okonnell) - but already a star who has to change the home coziness to the blinding light of the Sofis, the stunning clicking of cameras and the annoying attention of millions of fans. The artist directly sings about the latter in the new record: “The Internet is hungry to the most evil jokes, and someone should give an occasion for them”-a memorable line from the “Skinny” that opens the song.

It seems, however, that the most difficult challenge is exactly the third album. In the second, you can pierce - in case of failure, the audience will most likely treat you with understanding and write you into the victims of the notorious syndrome (“Happier than Ever” was not a failure and allowed Ailish to master many new forms and intonations as opposed to the spectacular, but slightly uniform electronic horror -Poppy of the first plate -however, the numbers will not allow to lie: in the USA he Divided three times with a smaller circulation than the predecessor). With the third, there is no such possibility: either this is a breakthrough, or a peak, getting out of which will be already much more difficult.

So it was at Madonna, who declared in the mid-1980s that she was not going to sing Like a Virgin all her life-“True Blue” turned out to be her first truly mature work, in which the artist herself acted as a co-author of all songs. And the risk was triumphantly justified: it was that plate that finally booked Madonna's place in the highest pop-musical league of the era-somewhere next to Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. Billy Ailish is turning on the Hit Me Soft and Hard album a similar trick, and although it is too early to judge its effectiveness, she definitely completed her part of the work.

Compared to other recent releases of large American stars - Taylor Swift and Beyoncé - the third record of Ailish is surprised by laconicism: this is not Magnum Opus of several dozen compositions, but a compact record that lasts a little less than 45 minutes. True, her short conversational fragment summarizes: "Well, when will we hear something new?" - the singer asks, as it were, on behalf of the listeners, or hinting at the fast output of another release (as some fans interpreted the words of Ailish), or teasing the public's insatiability. It is the last version that is closer to me, the benefit of his not always healthy relations with the audience, the singer in the album comments more than once or twice - there is even the composition “The Diner” , written on behalf of a stalker (“I saw you according to Telik and realized that we should to be together ").

“Hit Me Soft and Hard” is definitely conceived not as a random selection of relatively fresh songs, but as a whole statement - a conceptual album, as they would say half a century ago. It is no coincidence that Ailish this time did without promoters, fueling interest in a full -forming release - all ten tracks were published at the same time. And in the texts of the final two songs, “BitTersuite” and “Blue”, the previous eight are directly quit: everything was taught - reprise before moving to the code.

What is this conceptual album is more difficult to say. The teenager Billy Ailish talentedly voiced the approximate experience of her peers and peers: children's fears in half with already quite adult affection, euphoria and depression, awakening sexuality, sometimes reckless cognition of life. In Happier than Ever, she grew up with the target audience, but still could speak out of her face. Now she is 22 (“21 years old - like a whole life,” she sighs in “Skinny”), and those who listen to her, about the same. In this point, the inevitable finds out: what used to be a common experience, now has now turned into experience, just the fundamentally unfortunate - adults do not experience the same thing at the same time, their life trajectories are unique.

Having realized this, Ailish obviously makes the only possible decision: she sings about herself. About their clashes with Bodyshewing (“Skinny”), about his experience of lesbian love (“Lunch”), about what the affected party in the relationship ( “The Greatest” ) and, on the contrary, the offender ( “Lʼamour de ma vie” ) - Even about their favorite films ( "Chihiro" - a clear hello "Directed Ghosts" Hayao Miyazaki). There is no application for versatility in the Hit Me Hard and Soft album-perhaps, because of the sound level, the recording is solved mainly in muffled tones of the confessional author’s song (or, in the nomenclature adopted in the homeland, Singer-Songwriter). With some exceptions, these are medium -temple compositions with a leisurely guitar overcoming in those places where Bury a Friend had futuristic electronic bits.

As it seems, the conceptual integrity is inherent in “Hit Me Hard and Soft” primarily in the musical plan. The key to the device of the album helpfully provides Neologism “BitTersuite” - this is the name of one of the tracks from the plate. On the one hand, “Bittersweet” is “bitter-sweet”, heterogeneous to taste: they also say about feelings-for example, light sadness or, conversely, joy with elements of sadness. If you undertake to describe the emotional roll of the album in one word, “Bittersweet” will actually inevitably come to mind - however, this epithet here, as it is easy to notice, is written with an intentional spelling error. In this form, the root of Suite begins to guess in it - a reference, on the one hand, to the luxurious but dreary hotel rooms, in which the continuously touring artist is forced to hold the best years of life, and on the other hand, to the musical form of the suite.

Most of the songs from “Hit Me Hard and Soft”-and this is a rather non-trivial solution for mass pop music, which Billy Ailish obviously composes and performs,-are really small suits, that is, works consisting of several not directly related to each other (often contrasting) parts.

Here is the first “Skinny”: a magnificent ballad, in the final of which a string quartet suddenly enters (Finneas Omber’s scores, for the album, performed the New York ensemble Attacca Quartet, known for cooperation with modern academic composers like Caroline show). Here is Chihiro-a quiet composition with an elastic hums, closer to the end, literally drowning in a mare, through which even the vocals of Ailish are unsuccessfully trying to break through. Here is “The Greatest” is an elegic author's song that (like an echo of the title track with “Happier than Ever” ) explodes in the second half of a natural rock ballad. The next song “Lʼamour de Ma vie” breaks off an even more unexpected knee, a breakdown - nothing portended! - Literally on the festival EDM with sharp autotun effects on the voice.

The most numerous-and stunning-metamorphoses occur in the final composition of “Blue”: the first part is a peppy optimistic indie-drill with polyphony, the second is a nimble Lamento with string, into which the third theme is also mounted, a tongue twister reminiscent of the album “When We All Fall Asleep, Were Do We go? ”

These experiments with form, firstly, are quite interesting in themselves. Secondly, they serve as a signal to other artists: if Billy and Finneas, superstars of pop music of the 2020s, so it is possible, then they are worn today, and the attitude to the release as a set of snippets for social networks is not the only way. Thirdly (and the main), the form in the Hit Me Hard and Soft is consonant with the content. Life at 22 years old (and further-everywhere) is non-linear, complicated, composed of antirected impulses, of contrasting, annihilating each other, she has an heterogeneous bitter-sweet taste. How else to voice it, how to capture it in sound - and in the text? Just like this: “I try to live in black and White [I'm trying to live with a black and white life],” sings Billy Ailish, “but ihm so blue [but I'm so sad].” And adds: “True blue, true blue, I_m true blue”.

Lev Gankin