Billie Eilish live in London: another sublime stint from an eternal star

The O2, July 17: Three years after her first six-night residency at the arena, the pop star returns more ambitious and brilliant than ever

You’d be forgiven for having a sense of déjà vu walking up to the last of Billie Eilish’s six nights at London’s The O2. Three summers ago, the pop star first held a six-night residency at this same venue, then celebrating her second album, ‘Happier Than Ever’. Thanks to the pandemic addling our collective sense of time, it seems far too soon for her to be back for another stint – and selling it out – but here Eilish is, nonetheless, concluding another successful run.

It might not feel like much time has passed since, but much has changed. For a start, Eilish’s brother Finneas no longer tours with her, his absence filled by an expanded band. On occasion, Eilish gets to show off her skills on various instruments now. During a medley of ‘Lovely’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Ocean Eyes’, she sits down at a keyboard at the end of the stage, while the roaring penultimate track ‘Happier Than Ever’ sees her strap on a blue electric guitar and, as the song reaches its thundering crescendo, get down on her knees and shred.

The staging, too, is more ambitious and more impressive. Eilish performs in the middle of the floor, rather than on a typical stage at one end of the room. Her platform is giant, with space for two pits for her band and a gap in the middle where, sometimes, a cube of screens rises up and down – at times, a blindingly bright wall of light, at others, a cage from which Eilish performs within. The whole stage is covered in LED panels that change colour or show different graphics – during ‘Lunch’, the star’s image is repeated both across the screens that hang above it and all over the floor beneath her.

Performing in the round is a clever production move that puts her closer to the audience and whips up the hysteria to even giddier heights. To get to the stage, she can no longer rely on backstage corridors, but has to be carried through the crowd in a box. By now, fans are wise to this, so when they see Eilish’s crew start making their way to the path to the stage, they rush to the barriers and scream their lungs out. Throughout the show, she goes right to the very edges of the platform, almost within arm’s reach of the audience, who stretch out to her in hopes of making contact.

Towards the end of the night, Charli XCX’s face covers the stage as ‘Guess’ booms over the PA, Eilish suddenly out of view. Just as her verse in the ‘Brat’ collaboration begins, she pops up on a b-stage at the end of the room, ready to whip her hair and rave above the fans in that area. She remains there for a heartfelt ‘Everything I Wanted’ before racing back through the crowd, taking the time to do a lap and touch palms with as many people on the front rows as possible.

She takes mishaps in her stride – during ‘Ocean Eyes’, she starts cracking up, eventually throwing herself from her stool and rolling across the stage. “I really spaced out for a second, sorry guys,” she laughs afterwards. “I was thinking about all sorts of things that weren’t that song.” Eilish’s performances have always straddled the line between pop pro and watching your mate, and rather than this being a disappointing moment, her candour and charisma swing the pendulum to the latter state once more.

There’s still plenty of that slick pop professionalism, though. Before ‘When The Party’s Over’, she sits cross-legged in the middle of the stage and makes a request of the crowd. “I’m using a loop on my voice and creating a harmony stack,” she begins to explain. “It can only work if the entire room is completely silent for one minute.” Her fans dutifully respond until, harmonies layered, she begins to sing the first note of the song, and the room erupts with screams once more.

“I’m so grateful to have gotten to play here for six nights in a row,” she tells the crowd before her grand finale. “It’s a very special honour and I’m so lucky to get to do this with you guys and have this life and have this connection.” She waxes lyrical about her relationship with London – the place she played her first-ever headline show as a 15-year-old in 2017 – and touches on where her journey has taken her since. “It’s insane where it’s gone and where it is now.”

As if to reinforce that point, she finishes the show with ‘Birds Of A Feather’, the world-beating love song that forms one of the key highlights of her latest album, ‘Hit Me Hard And Soft’. It’s the perfect example of how Eilish has grown in the last three years and since the start of her career – always an artist who’s been able to write killer songs, but one who consistently finds a way to level up and tap deeper into universal emotions. Her latest O2 residency may be over now, but next time we see Eilish in London, we bet it’ll be with shows – and songs – that take her to even greater heights.

Billie Eilish played: 

‘Chihiro’
‘Lunch’
‘NDA’
‘Therefore I Am’
‘Wildflower’
‘When The Party’s Over’
‘The Diner’
‘ilomilo’
‘Bad Guy’
‘The Greatest’
‘Your Power’
‘Skinny’
‘Halley’s Comet’
‘Bury A Friend’
‘Oxytocin’
‘Guess’
‘Everything I Wanted’
‘Lovely’ / ‘Blue’ / ‘Ocean Eyes’
‘L’amour De Ma Vie’
‘What Was I Made For?’
‘Happier Than Ever’
‘Birds Of A Feather’