What do you want from me?

Back to the mothership!

The last work freebie tickets I got were for Noah Kahan, but I was forced to immediately surrender them to my daughters (it's fair to say they enjoyed it more than I would have) but I got my revenge by getting a ticket to see Billie Eilish - I had plenty of comments along the lines of "are you sure you wouldn't rather give the ticket to me?". They certainly would have known more of the songs than me because I'm, at best, vaguely familiar with her work but I was looking forward to the show because I've heard plenty of good things about her live. 

And, wandering in to the O2, I had a surprise because the stage was set up in the centre of the arena. I've seen quite a few sports events using the main floor, but never a musical artist before - there are obvious issues with performing in the middle of the audience and on top of that it was a big old stage, so I was intrigued as to how one person was going to cope with it.

First up we had Syd the support act who gave it a decent go, but did look a bit lost. In terms of her musical performance, she's got a decent enough voice but the material wasn't exactly stellar - but the surprisingly full audience were pretty appreciative. She was also unlucky in terms of my view of her because her backing musicians weren't allowed to use the sunken area for the proper musicians and so had to set up on stage - and they chose to do so facing away from me, which meant Syd faced away from me for most of her set as well, although she did remember to wander about from time to time.

After Syd left the stage, the lights came up and the buzz immediately increased with any empty seats filling up quickly. I'd say the audience was 90% female - the only men I could see were tolerant husband, boyfriends or fathers (funnily enough, I didn't spot any other fifty-something men there on their own). The other defining characteristic of the audience was the amount they'd spent on merch - I'd say well over half had either come in or bought a Billie tee or jacket. And boy, were they looking forward to seeing Billie - every time anything happened (including a weird cage thing being lowered from the ceiling) or anyone appeared a massive cheer went up, so you can just imagine what happened when the lights went down...

...for us to be shown a short film. Oh OK, maybe we'll hold off the cheering for a bit longer then. The film was actually well done - it was about the environmental impact of touring and it was pitched at the right level of "we're realistic so know it's not great for the planet, but we've done everything we can to minimise it", so it came across as pretty honest. And after the film, the lights stayed down so it was obviously time for some more cheering...

...and this time, they weren't to be disappointed - lots of light, lots of noise and all over a sudden the funny cage thing went from being see-through to being an opaque block of white light, which obviously made me think "I wonder who's going to be in there!?!". 

But they were obviously one step ahead of me though because the brightly shining cube now rose into the air to reveal - oh, absolutely no sign of Billie. Until, of course the cube turned translucent and lowered back to the stage to reveal Billie on a platform which was considerably higher and less stable than I'd have fancied standing on - quite possibly being made to move violently by the volume of cheering and screaming going on. 

So it was really quite the start and she didn't really let up for the next 100 minutes or so. It was a massive stage but she was all over it at great speed for the entire evening - for someone who comes across as quite introverted, she positively thrived in that environment, holding the audience in the palm of her hand whilst also obviously appreciating their support. And she's really rather talented as well - her voice is amazing (and was never affected by the physical effort she was expending) and she also took spins on guitar and keyboard as well at times. Just showing off really!

Given my lack of familiarity with her work, I only recognised "bad guy", "What Was I Made For?", "bury a friend" (which was particularly good) and a very decent cover of "Moon River" but setlist.fm allows me to also identify "L'AMOUR DE MA VIE" and "Guess", with Charli XCX singing along with her on the latter via the screens as being highlights, along with "when the party's over" which she starts by recording six loops of harmonies in a very impressive fashion (if I was to try such a thing the results could be used as a weapon of mass destruction). But there really wasn't a dull moment - it was a high octane set, even in the quieter moments.

And she used the stage really well - she did a great job at disappearing from where you thought she was and popping up somewhere else, including on a side stage at one point. And they had all the gadgets on there - the funny cage was a marvel but there obviously, there were also huge video screens, the entire floor of the stage was also a large screen, lasers, light columns rising up and down and flames shooting out of the musicans' area - they must have been roasting!

And what a decent sound the band made too - they were obviously very skilful, but I think things were also improved from having the stage in the centre (and it obviously didn't hurt that my seat was situated halfway along the longest side). The arena sounded great with some amazing bass kicking in at various points. It also looked like the show was being filmed, so it will be interesting to see if it becomes available at some point.

My expectations were actually pretty high for this, but she totally blew them away - and I've made sure that my daughters are fully aware of this. After declaring that Pulp was one of the best gigs I've seen at the O2, I have to say that Billie topped them in terms of putting on a show - particularly when you consider that for the most part it was just her on a considerably larger stage. All in all, it was a really top notch show from a very talented performer with some amazing visuals and excellent sound - what more can you ask for?