“Am I acting my age now?” Billie Eilish, 22, wonders aloud on the opening track to her ambitious third album, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”

“Am I already on the way out?”

The 10-track release sees a once-in-a-generation pop performer once again rewriting the rules: If Eilish’s first record introduced the world to her brilliant horror-pop, with its macabre humor, off-kilter beats and teenage Invisalign slurps, and her second wiped away those black tears for pop crooning and bossa nova ruminations on the expectations of fame, her third is an amalgamation of both, with bold new surprises.

“Hit Me Hard and Soft” proves Eilish to be an outsider in contemporary pop in a few ways: This is an album meant to be heard and enjoyed in full, working contrary to the current single-centric model of the music industry. And she earns that distinction, with a fuller sound, courtesy her brother, producer, and lifelong collaborator Finneas O’Connell, now joined by Andrew Marshall on drums and the Attacca Quartet on strings.

“Hit Me Hard and Soft” is the loudest Eilish has ever been on record — no longer singing almost exclusively in gorgeous, hushed tones just above an ASMR whisper, buried underneath sweeping, innovative production. Clearly, she’s gained the self-assurance to belt above the mix.