Billie Eilish @ 9:30 Club - 11/7/2018
Billie Eilish @ 9:30 Club (Photo by Anna Moneymaker / @anna.money)
The pop music scene has been stormed by sixteen-year-old Billie Eilish. She has huge mainstream appeal (she has multiple songs with at least 100 million song streams each and is the 67th most streamed artist in the world, according to Spotify), but she’s an artist unlike most among her peers. Her crushingly honest and even depressing outlook on life is something that has captivated fans worldwide, but most especially her teenage peers. The Billie Eilish concert experience is as unique and incomparable as Eilish herself, which explains why she was able to easily sell out both an early and a late show at 9:30 Club. And even more impressively, she doesn’t even have a debut album out yet.
Eilish’s appeal was immediately apparent outside the 9:30 Club. Lines of young fans were waiting outside long before doors opened for the early 5:30 show. The line wrapped around the block and was chock full of Billie Eilish dopplegängers decked out in blue hair and baggy shorts, just like their idol. Inside, the 9:30 Club security team was hard at work physically halting eager fans from running to the barricade. The drill call of “No running!” could be heard up until the start of the opener Childish Major, who is a music producer turned artist who just had a song featured in the soundtrack of the HBO drama “Insecure.” The crowd was open minded towards Childish Major and participated in his onstage direction during songs, but whenever he mentioned Eilish’s name at any point, the sound of piercingly-high screams rang through the club.
Once the clock struck 10 PM, Billie Eilish came out from the body of a tarantula that had been built on stage and broke into the smooth and biting song “My Boy.” The crowd sang along in unison and greeted every song with rapturous enthusiasm, but when Billie hushed the crowd, everyone obeyed. And conversely, when she told them to jump, they did so with abandon. Eilish had an indelible command over the crowd, an impressive sight to see, but it’s not surprising when you witness just how passionate she is about her music. The rest of the night’s setlist was packed with her hits “when the party’s over,” “lovely,” “you should see me in a crown,” and more that the crowd was more than able to sing along word for word. Billie Eilish put on a show that people will undoubtedly be talking about for a long time to come.
Billie Eilish’s latest release is the single “when the party’s over” via Darkroom/Interscope Records.
