It was thrilling to watch Billie Eilish bend usual arena concert convention to her will.
Intimacy is the 23-year-old American megastar’s superpower – her groundbreaking bedroom pop, dark, tense, off-kilter and with sullen magnetism, is ideal for secluded, personal listening – but her global success has conversely forced her to into huge venues her music should be unsuited to.
It’s been that way since 2019 debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? went supernova when she was just 17; numerous Grammys and Oscars (Bond and Barbie, a record for her age) have followed.
At the first of six nights in London’s O2, she offered up a dazzling answer to the challenge of upscaling both sound and emotion. Eilish did away with the O2’s usual structure and placed a basketball court-like stage in the middle of the floor; her band – which for the first time this tour didn’t feature her brother and co-writer Finneas, busy with his own solo career (“devastating” as Eilish said) – played in two slightly lowered sections at either end.
It was such a clever, inventive trick: with American sports-like big screens high above and some spectacular visuals – club-like lasers and strobes, lighting up floors, fire – it gave Eilish the platform to simultaneously let loose but bring people with her. The staging was Instagram ready, for sure, but it immediately shrunk the room: Eilish felt close, wherever she was puppyishly bouncing around.
She made the most of it.
The staging was Instagram ready but it immediately shrunk the room (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Live Nation)For opener “Chihiro”, she emerged from a white cube centre stage dressed in backwards blue cap, Comme Des Garcons sports shirt and baggy white shorts and immediately worked every corner of the stage; by second song “Lunch,” her 2024 playful ode to queer sex, she sprinted around the stage in a figure of eight shape; after heavier takes on 2021 pair “NDA” and “Therefore I Am” she stood and milked the applause for over a minute, working the cameras; all big eyes and knowing smile, at once vampy and girl-next-door. The devotion among the young female crowd was something to witness.
The deafening noise only ceased when Elish demanded it: for 2018’s “When the Party’s Over” she asked for silence in order to create a loop of her own voice, allowing her to harmonise with herself (and showed she was singing live, which wasn’t always apparent).
It was the only time the crowd abated during an all-killer-no-filler 90-minute show (last year Eilish scornfully laughed off the idea of playing mammoth three hour sets a la Taylor Swift.) While you might wonder how some of this unconventional music found such a mass audience – both early track “Bury a Friend” and “The Diner,” from last year’s palette-expanding third album Hit Me Hard and Soft, were different shades of creepy noir pop – her hits, beefed up and often dancier, did indeed hit hard.
She closed with ‘Birds of a Feather’ while confetti rained down. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Live Nation)There was a semi-acoustic section that pointedly included fame-ruminations “Your Power” and “TV” – songs that astutely skewer and dissect fame, which, as one of the most scrutinised young women in the world, has often sent Eilish into a particular type of hell – but otherwise the big songs raced along. For teen-goes-bad tale of “Bad Guy” – the bubbly, propulsive synth line remains irrepressible – she took a Pro-tool camera and filmed the crowd reaction; on the B-stage, she sang a wild version of “Guess”, her underwear-fetish collaboration with Charli XCX (who appeared on the big screens) as Brat green-coloured lasers sent everyone dizzy.
The finale was breathtaking: her Barbie song “What Was I Made For?” was so moving as to be tear-inducing; “Happier Than Ever” was her truly anthemic moment, as she played guitar to a cathartic wall of noise. She closed with last year’s omnipresent “Birds of a Feather”, a light touch dream of a song, while confetti rained down. Then she was gone, the best pop star of her generation having given a masterclass in arena-sized intimacy.
Billie Eilish plays the O2 tonight, then touring.
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