wWhen you've already hit the top, do you go as a pop star? Maybe you'll be in flames and move to Vegas. Maybe you'll launch a billion dollar make-up line and never play again. Maybe you re-record all the hits, take the world's biggest victory lap, Break earthquake records.
If you're Billy Eilish, you'll dig deeper holes. You continue to write about the heartbeat of the death of fame, the banality and atrocities of public opinion. Continue to excavate all the trembling neurotics until they become the crater of your creation. Or – like the cover of Eilish's 2024 album, Hit Me Hard and Soft – you're submerged in a bottomless well and grabbing the surface.
Those uncertainties don't stop you from placing them in the epic arena. At the entertainment centre in Brisbane, the first stop on her Australian tour, Eilish forms the room like a patty. Often it feels like a cult gathering. The two attendees are dressed in variations of the idol's signature silhouette: small hats, huge shorts, wire frame glasses and sports jerseys. Some people camp outside for days in their flimsy tents.
Along the way, Eilish demands complete silence for the rendition of the 2018 single when the party ends. And it's a strong audience of 10,000 people, and is tied up by paused animations for a minute. Then, among the greatest of Lovelorn Belter, Eilish soars on a pedestal in the air in the distance.
Pure joy feels new to artists who often talk about the sacrifice of performance. “I didn't realize I could make the tour fun,” Eilish said. Trend Profile last year. “I've been very lonely for many years, but I'm not interested in it anymore. I want to enjoy the show.”
Enjoy her doing. Often she infiltrates sprints around the figure 8 stage and circulates the live band in endless loops. This is her first tour without her brother and longtime producer Finny, but his absence — in an apology — is barely noticeable. Eilish swells, vaults and ducks between Hyalin's screens, partially obscuring her figure, resisting the glare of the spotlight. Sometimes she is a blur of her hands and feet that have been sprayed. Then she picked up the camera, and her face suddenly picked up Gargantuan, replicating it around the stadium.
It's a cat and mouse game, and nods to the subject she wrote about her entire career. Trap doors of visibility, a wasteful dream of privacy. And her star was last in Australia in 2022, so it continued to rise. He made her the youngest person to win two Oscars (no time to die after her first victory on the Bond theme). Later, the hugely feathered bird appeared. This is a song about the self-temptation crash that has over 2 billion streams on Spotify.
As expected, both of these tracks are lodestones in the set list, and otherwise evoke a somewhat suppressed crowd. (It's a Tuesday night. They might be forgiven.) Still, we don't resist the appeal of lunch. Similarly, her poem on the supposition of the Charli XCX collaboration: the incredible ode formula for Lacy's underwear turns the arena into a rave review worthy of its huge, oppressive bass.
Throughout, there are hints of Eilish's previous trademarks. A creepy streak that highlighted many of the snakes from her debut record in the show: a flash of Slithering Crocodile on screen, or a horrifying mosquito of her early single berry a friend amplified with literal fireworks on stage Synth.
However, this is a tour that creates room for evolution. Eilish's delivery on the supposition, a seductive deadpan, is far from the whispers of Gose, which she made her name. Elsewhere, she groans with an ominous baritone as she bumps me into a fierce, soft, near blue. In the middle of L'Amour de Ma Vie, a poison pen letter to the former flame, Eilish stretches his voice through automatic adjustments, resilient and crackling through dance breakdowns.
These tracks feel just as probabilistic as the weather. They enter noiseless and then are supported by a rapid gust of wind – they tremble and rise. When it's already hit the top, you just keep going.
