It’s not simply that Billie Eilish is, as she’s eager to level out, the youngest headliner in Glastonbury’s historical past … it’s that she’s the primary mainstream pop star – as within the form of pop star that tweenage women scream at – to headline Glastonbury. Just a few years in the past, the announcement of an artist like that filling the principle Friday night time slot on the Pyramid stage would most likely have generated a level of controversy. Some berk would have gotten up a petition about it. However in 2022, the looks of Billie Eilish’s identify on the high of the invoice handed with out remark.
Whether or not that’s proof that Glastonbury’s viewers is skewing youthful, or that Glastonbury is turning into extra pop-facing within the artists it books, or that Eilish is taken into account of a barely totally different stripe to her friends, is an fascinating query. Watching her bounce from the commercial electro pop of You Ought to See Me in a Crown, to the kitschy lounge stylings of Billie’s Bossa Nova, to the Beatles-y Getting Older, to the Dr Dre-influenced All of the Good Women Go to Hell, one is struck by the sense that she’s actually extra musically eclectic than most of her friends. And for those who get the impression that festivals aren’t essentially her pure habitat – “you guys are troupers, along with your tents and shit”, she opines at one level – from the second she seems, she seems solely at residence.
Whereas most of the artists who seem on the Pyramid stage on Friday appear overawed by the dimensions of the group they’ve attracted and the vociferousness of their response – at one level, it seems like Sam Fender is so struck by the second he may begin crying – Eilish seems something however. There’s one thing imperious about her efficiency: all of it feels appealingly assured. The set is actually a truncated model of the present she’s been touring round arenas in current months, and it comes full with pop area present staples together with dividing the viewers up and getting them to cheer in flip, a number of discuss empowerment and loving your self, and movies of the artist as a small youngster taking part in on the large screens. Nevertheless it doesn’t lose something in translation to a competition setting. If she asks the viewers to crouch down and leap, they fortunately oblige. It’s heavy on slow-moving ballads, which is theoretically dangerous, however she by no means appears to lose the group.
Maybe that’s as a result of Eilish is a massively partaking performer. Furthermore she genuinely seems to be having fun with herself, at odds together with her pouty gothic picture and the plethora of songs on her final album – Happier Than Ever – that made being a teenage pop sensation once you’re barely out of her teenagers sound like a reasonably depressing enterprise. Her enthusiasm is infectious, her largest hits – Bury a Good friend, Unhealthy Man – pack an immense bass-heavy punch, whereas the ballad Your Energy, launched with a point out of the overturning of Roe Vs Wade as “a darkish day for girls”, has a spellbinding, eerie fragility. By the point she ends with Happier Than Ever’s slowly-building title monitor – its furiously offended crescendo given an additional layer of theatricality by the sheer amount of pyrotechnics exploding over the stage – her efficiency doesn’t simply look like a musical shift for Glastonbury, however a triumph as properly.
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