Billie Eilish is nearly a month away from dropping her third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, this spring without releasing any singles beforehand. However, in a new interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, she decided to break the rules a little bit and tease a 15-second snippet of one of the project’s tracks.
The song, reportedly titled “Chihiro” in reference to the main character in the beloved Studio Ghibli film, Spirited Away, features a thumping melody with Eilish singing in her characteristically soft tone: “Today, maybe tomorrow/ Open the door for me/ I know you said before/ You can’t cope with it no more.” Eilish has been a longtime fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s filmography, and has even jokingly admitted to having a crush on the dragon in Spirited Away.
“Every time you put anything out, it feels like your nudes leaked a little bit,” the nine-time Grammy winner said of the upcoming album. “I think this one specifically is like that. Something that Finneas and I said to a couple of people when we started to play it for people is we kind of made the album that if somebody had said, ‘I want you to make an album and no one is going to hear it. You don’t have to worry about anyone’s ears or opinions or anything at all. It’s in your contract to make an album but no one can hear it.’ We pretty much made that album. We made that album without much thought of other people.”
Hit Me Hard and Soft, out May 17, will follow the musician’s 2019 debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and her 2021 sophomore effort Happier Than Ever, both of which topped the Billboard 200 for three weeks.
Watch Eilish’s interview with Zane Lowe below.
