An apt metaphor for the speed and intensity of her meteoric rise to pop superstardom, Billie Eilish began her show at the O2 arena by being propelled up from a springboard under the stage. The 20-year-old has seven Grammys and an Oscar under her belt. She also has a headline show at Glastonbury next week. In fact, she has been uncontainable throughout her whole short career, and her performance at the O2 Arena was no different.
“I want everybody to flop their limbs”, she declared towards the start of her performance, readying the 20,000-strong audience. Other dictums were jump around, hug your neighbour, purge negative thoughts and “don’t be an asshole”. All dutifully responded to the Ten Commandments of Billie, who is seen as the influential voice of Generation Z for good reason.
It was a necessary warm-up, as the energy contained in her performance was often breathtaking. She stomped and pogoed through the stadium-wobblers of her first album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?., including show opener Bury A Friend, where she performed Exorcist-style backbends to the song’s menacing drum shuffle and distorted, industrial screeches. The electro bangers of You Should See Me in A Crown and Bad Guy had the same charming demon energy. It’s a minor shame that her voice, with its haunting, whispery quality, at times was lost amid the noise.
The set provided a fitting backdrop to her gigantic stage presence. Tentacular lights descended from above, a catwalk plunged into the heart of the audience and a forklift spun around, allowing Eilish to access the more unloved sections of the crowd. On stage, her brother Finneas, who is also her co-songwriter, producer and best friend, stood in dramatic silhouette on a raised platform, with Andrew Marshall on the drums opposite.
It was reassuring to see a joyfulness in Eilish’s performance, given that her second album, Happier Than Ever, lays bare the darker side of the scouring spotlight. She sang about having to watch out for stalkers, stay largely housebound and make lovers sign non-disclosure agreements in NDA, but always with a mischievous grin that shone right to the back of this cavernous arena. After she played a new song, TV, she watched with genuine adoration as the entire audience sang the lyrics back to her after only a few prompts. Those lyrics partly protest the dismantling of women’s reproductive rights in America. Clearly, Eilish intends her next chapter to be every bit as irrepressible as her last.
Towards the end of the show, she sang Getting Older in front of a montage of photos and videos from her childhood. Even though she was born after the turn of the millennium, it still felt like this show was a retrospective, showcasing a life’s body of work. She’s achieved so much! Look how far she’s come, you thought. It’s genuinely difficult to picture where Eilish can go from here, but I bet it’s not where we expect.
