SKINNY

Album

Hit Me Hard and Soft

Label

Interscope Records

Genre

Avant-pop

Composer(s)

Billie O'Connell;Finneas O'Connell

Entered Chart

Jun 1, 2024

Peak Date

Jun 1, 2024

Billie Eilish opens Hit Me Hard and Soft with this soft-yet-exuberant ballad. "Skinny" bridges the reflections on stardom and self-image on her previous album, Happier Than Ever, with a newfound maturity. People say I look happy Just because I got skinny Eilish lays bare the shallowness of some reactions to her weight loss. She feels judged about a disconnect between the happy facade and the person inside. This isn't new territory for Eilish. She confronted body-shaming before on Happier Than Ever, particularly on "Not My Responsibility" and "Overheated." The singer has also previously discussed her body image in interviews. "Going through my teenage years of hating myself and all that stupid s--t. A lot of it came from my anger towards my body, and how mad I was at how much pain it's caused me, and what I've lost because of things that happened to it... I felt like my body was gaslighting me for years," she told Vogue in June 2023. "I had to go through a process of being like, my body is actually me. And it's not out to get me." There's a deeper self-awareness at play here, though. But the old me is still me and maybe the real me And I think she's pretty There's a desire to embrace her authentic self, to break free from societal beauty standards. It's a subtle but significant shift from Happier Than Ever, where the focus was on societal expectations. Here, Eilish seems to be reclaiming her narrative. Eilish also contrasts the freedom of performing with the constraints of fame. I'm a bird in a cage I'm a dog in a dog pound The pressure and judgment are relentless, especially for a global pop star. Later on in the song, the internet's dark side rears its ugly head. And the internet is hungry for the meanest kinda funny And somebody's gotta feed it There's an insatiable hunger for negativity online, and for Eilish the jabs are still painful, even after years in the spotlight. "I like myself more than I used to, and I'm more interested in how I feel than how they feel," she told Vogue. "But then also that might be a load of bulls--t, because it still hurts my feelings like a son of a bitch." The wordplay with "hungry" and "feed it" is a clever touch, a reminder of the song title. Though this song is mainly about her body image and life in the spotlight, Eilish also references a heartbreak. I never did you wrong I, I loved you for so long Listeners may make links with The Neighbourhood singer Jesse Rutherford, who dated Eilish from October 2022 to May 2023. Report this ad Eilish co-wrote and recorded this song, along with the rest of the album, with her brother Finneas O'Connell. Finneas commented to Rolling Stone that "Skinny" was "a total false promise" based on the previous song we'd heard from Eilish, the Oscar-winning ballad she recorded for Barbie. "If you're remembering 'What Was I Made For?' and then you hear [it], you go, 'Oh, OK. I understand this world'," he said. Then the drums come in [on 'Lunch'], and 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 strings in the outro interpolate those in track 6 on the album, "The Greatest." Speaking to ALT 98.7 FM, Eilish explained how she wanted to incorporate more orchestral elements this time around. "Finneas and I] have been wanting to use strings for years. And we've done it occasionally, but never really, like, fully. And, I think early on, Finneas and I had talked about that this is the album that we're gonna do." The creative process involved Finneas using a synth to mimic the sound of strings while composing the melody. They then took his creation to a real composer for a formal transcription before bringing it to life with a four-piece string section. During an appearance on Radio 1's New Music Show with Jack Saunders, Billie revealed that Hit Me Hard and Soft had been in the making for almost two years before its release. "We started working on this album officially in October 2022 and had many months of ideas that weren't very solidified and weren't very exciting to us," she recalled. "We liked them but we were like... I don't think we can do this any more." Billie shared that "Skinny" was the first song she and Finneas wrote for the album, and it "awoke something in us." Then they penned "What Was I Made For?," which opened "all these doors to millions of things in terms of inspiration."

Hmm, hmm

Fell in love for the first time
With a friend, it's a good sign
Feelin' off when I feel fine
Twenty-one took a lifetime
People say 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

And I still cry
Cry
And you know why

Am I acting my age now?
Am I already on the way out?
When I step off the stage, I'm a bird in a cage
I'm a dog in a dog pound
And you said I was your secret
And you didn't get to keep it
And the internet is hungry for the meanest kinda funny
And somebody's gotta feed it

Oh, do you still cry?
Still cry
Cry

I never did you wrong (never did you wrong)
And my (oh), my patience is gone (is gone)
And I (I), I never did you wrong (you)
I, I loved you for so long (hmm)