Welcome to the red room. With flames bursting like panic attacks and lasers streaking across the sky, Billie Eilish bounces down a huge ramp lit with crimson blood and begins to inhabit a pyramid-sized metaphor for her inner turmoil.
“Are you ready to have some fun?” she asks, between songs about suicide (muted tribal opener “burying a friend”) and obsession (spook-disco track “my strange addiction”). Yet she soon asks us to shout “whatever piss you off” during a compulsive rendition of “you should see me in a crown.” What we should really prepare for is 90 minutes of black-pop catharsis.
In its own way, Eilish’s title is just as important as Jay-Z’s or Stormzy’s. Not because she’s the festival’s youngest headliner, though that certainly raises the roof of teen Tik-Tokker’s dreams of fame. But because it marks the ascendancy of alternative pop: a homemade, personalized imitation of the mainstream that comes much closer to the real-life teen experience of 2022. – Swedish production teams in the tooth. The alternate pop tones are dark and pessimistic, its emotions raw and shattered, its concerns laden with doom. Fame is forged by insecurity, sex is regrettable, and drugs, when mentioned, are usually prescribed for anxiety.
True to form, there’s plenty of angst and insecurity that runs through Eilish’s set, from the twilight mambo of “GOLDWING” to the superb nocturnal groover of “Therefore I Am.” Halfway through, she mourns the reversal of Roe vs Wade (“a dark day for women in the United States”) before an acoustic duet with her songwriter brother Finneas on “Your Power.” Before ‘All I Wanted,’ a headline about celebrity hassles, she references climate anxiety, the subject of her new film Overheated and the theme of his recent six-night run at the O2.
But where stylistic ancestors such as Frank Ocean and The xx delivered understated, brilliant festival headlining performances that blossomed into a dramatic crescendo, Eilish deftly leads a deeper, more dynamic experience. Boasting a debut album of dank pop bangers and a richer, more introspective follow-up – last year happier than ever – she jumps easily between starting evenings of visceral pity with “tummy ache” and a fantastic “villain”, charming us with her childhood home videos on “Getting Older”, and pausing the show for a session of self-help therapy.
Billie Eilish performs on the Pyramid Stage during day three of the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm
(Getty Images)
Harry Styles’ long-awaited guest appearance doesn’t happen, but it likely would have been overshadowed by the rock ‘n’ roll climax of “Happier Than Ever.” Alternative pop has arrived, with an almighty bang.
