Billie Eilish came into the rollout for her third album, Hit Me Hard and Soft , with plenty of trust from her label, thanks to a trophy case full of Grammys and Oscars, and her previous full-lengths topping the charts. And Eilish knew exactly how she wanted to use that trust — by forgoing the typical music-industry rule of releasing advance singles for a new record. “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,” Eilish told Rolling Stone .
A press release further touted Hard and Soft as something “ideally listened to in its entirety from beginning to end.” Since Beyoncé’s surprise self-titled drop in 2013, more artists have started doing this, with labels amenable to losing out on early buzz in hopes an album will have a longer tail. (No one has used this more to her advantage than Taylor Swift, who hasn’t pre-issued a single since 2019.
) But even the biggest stars eventually need to give the label a track to promote on radio to help them stay on the charts. Eilish played along and readied “Lunch” as a post-release single for Hard and Soft, debuting the video 12 hours after the album’s midnight release. As much as she wanted fans to hear her new record in full, “Lunch” seemed like the track that could stand on its own, with a thumping lo-fi beat recalling “bad guy” and buzzy lyrics about her queer identity.
At first, it did: “Lunch” immediately rocketed to No..