It’s not just that Billie Eilish is, as she points out, the youngest headliner in Glastonbury’s history … but she’s the first major pop star, as in the kind of pop star they call the teenagers, led by Glastonbury. A few years ago, the announcement of an artist like the one filling the main slot on Friday night on the Pyramid stage would probably have generated some controversy. Some madman would have made a request about it. But in 2022, the appearance of Billie Eilish’s name at the top of the bill was passed without comment.
If this is evidence that the Glastonbury audience is leaning younger, or that Glastonbury is becoming more pop in artists than books, or that Eilish is considered to be from a slightly different band than his peers, it is an interesting question. Seeing her bounce from the industrial electropop of You Should See Me in a Crown, to the kitsch lounge styles of Billie’s Bossanova, the Beatles and Getting Older, to All the Good Girls Goto Hell, influenced by Dr. Dre, a he is surprised. in the sense that she is certainly more musically eclectic than most of her peers. And if you get the impression that festivals aren’t necessarily their natural habitat – “you’re gentlemen, with tents and shit,” she says at one point – from the moment she shows up, she looks at home.
While many of the artists appearing on the Pyramid stage on Friday seem surprised by the size of the crowd they have attracted and the voice of their response, at one point, it seems that Sam Fender is so surprised by the moment in what could start. crying – Eilish looks anything but. There is something compelling about his performance: everything feels very confident. The ensemble is essentially a truncated version of the show that has been touring the arenas in recent months, and includes basic elements of pop shows, such as splitting the audience and making them cheer in turn, talking a lot about the empowerment and love yourself. , and videos of the little artist playing on the big screens. But it loses nothing in translating into a festival setting. If he asks the audience to bend down and jump, they force him to do so. He’s heavy on slow-moving ballads, which is theoretically risky, but he never seems to lose the crowd.
Photography: David Levene / The Guardian
Maybe that’s because Eilish is a very attractive performer. Plus, it looks like he’s really having fun, at odds with his gothic image and the sheer number of songs from his latest album, Happily Ever After, which made him feel like a teen pop when you’re just out of the her adolescence sounds like a beautiful one. miserable business. His enthusiasm is contagious, his biggest hits – Buria Friend, Bad Guy – deliver a huge hit of serious bass, while the ballad Your Power, presented with a mention of the scope of Roe Vs Wade as “a dark day for women, ”she has a fascinating and strange fragility. When he finishes with the song of the title of Happier Than Ever that was constructed slowly – its crescendo furious and angry given an additional layer of theatricality by the great amount of pyrotechnics that explodes on the scene, its action does not seem only a musical change for Glastonbury, but also a triumph.