Billie Eilish at 3Arena · Gig Review

So far this decade, few have reached the level of both critical and commercial success that Billie Eilish has achieved: 3 #1 albums, 9 Grammy awards and nearly 100 billion streams worldwide. Few artists ever achieve numbers of this stature, and yet Billie has done all of this at just 23 years old. This made me wonder as I walked into the 3Arena why she was still settling for playing smaller venues like arenas. Not that arenas are exactly “small” (the 3Arena has a capacity for 13,000 attendees), but with the level of demand Billie has amassed she could comfortably sell out the 50,000 capacity Aviva Stadium just a few miles across the river, or even the home of Gaelic football, the 80,000 capacity Croke Park. As the night went on, however, it made more and more sense to me that while Billie may theoretically be able to play these venues, they’re not the kind of place for her. At least not for the Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour.

Walking into the venue, you were immediately hit with one striking difference about this show compared to the majority of major tours nowadays: the stage was situated in the centre of the floor, complete with a 360° stage design and a large wraparound screen hanging from the ceiling. This marvel of stage design not only gave an open view to see all the action, but it helped bring the audience closer to everything going on. This level of intimacy is rare for arena shows these days, made even more special by the amphitheatre-like design of the 3Arena. As a massive LED box drops to the floor of the stage just after 8pm, out the other end comes the Los Angeles-born megastar to the deafening sound of thousands of screams. Opening with “CHIHIRO” from the 2024 album “Hit Me Hard and Soft” provides a more muted beginning to the show, giving Billie the opportunity to demonstrate her well-renowned vocal prowess, but also to hear just how loud it can get when 13,000 passionate fans sing in unison. The energy in the room then cranks up to eleven with the lead single from the same album “LUNCH”, combined with bright visuals and lasers hanging from the ceiling to create a feeling more like a rave than a concert.

What Billie does best throughout the show is to balance the moments of cathartic energy-inducing madness with the calmer more vulnerable moments, reflective of the different sides of Billie’s music. At one point, she asks the audience to fall to complete silence for a minute as she layers her own vocals on top of one another before leading into “when the party’s over”, one of the many hits from her breakout debut album “WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?”. The crowd obeys her wishes and almost acted like a backbone to support Billie throughout the show, whether it was answering to her call-and-response requests, or providing the backing vocals for “WILDFLOWER” and “THE DINER”. Billie then returns with arguably her most successful song, 2019’s “bad guy” - to have this as the 9th song in the setlist, rather than saving it for the encore, was a testament to the sheer catalogue of hits at her disposal.

Perhaps where we see Billie at her most vulnerable is during an acoustic portion of the set where she is joined by her two backing vocalists and an acoustic guitar in the middle of the stage - even in other parts of the show like the standout hit from 2023’s “Barbie” movie “What Was I Made For?”, she is still seen frolicking around the stage and embracing those at the barricade who had been there all day long waiting. Billie even goes as far as to request the audience to sit down during her acoustic portion, as if it was an intermission. While an interesting request at first, it began to make sense as what followed. As “Oxytocin” comes on, Billie urges everyone across the arena to stand up and jump around. When she noticed the first row of fans still sat at the top of the arena, she almost aggressively questions them, asking “What are you doing?! Stand up!!”, before later realising they were told to remain seated for security reasons as she lets out a big laugh. This is then followed by the smash-hit collaboration with Charli XCX “Guess”, where the instrumental break is brought in with a sea of flashing lights and moving lasers. If I had enough to drink that night, I’d have been second guessing if I accidentally stumbled into a nightclub. One notable absence from the set is her Grammy-winning song “everything i wanted”, a typical mainstay in the tour setlist. However, due to the 3Arena being such a small venue and the floor not having enough space, the B-stage that this song would typically be performed on was absent, meaning this was skipped over completely. An obvious shame, as the song provides some of the best writing that we’ve seen from her to this day.

As a piano is wheeled onto the stage, Billie plays through two of her biggest songs: the debut 2016 single “ocean eyes”, as well as her most streamed song, 2018’s “lovely” with Khalid (3.4 billion streams and counting). However, she only plays a minute of each before moving swiftly on; a strange way to treat those songs, especially when she dedicates approximately 8 minutes of the set to “L’AMOUR DE MA VIE” from “Hit Me Hard and Soft”. The show in itself is already only 90 minutes, and though this is an average length for an arena tour nowadays, you can’t help but feel there is a little left to be desired considering the notable omissions from the setlist, such as “TV”, “idontwannabeyouanynore” and “i love you”. Nevertheless, Billie saves two of her best songs to close out what was an electric show, firstly beginning the encore with the title track from the 2021 sophomore album “Happier Than Ever”, featuring a guitar-shredding Billie and a passionate instrumental break. The show ultimately concludes with arguably the biggest song of last year, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER”, complete with confetti cannons and large choir-like singalongs with the crowd, who I thought were excellent all night. Leaving the arena with the sun still not fully set, I do have that inkling feeling of wanting more - after all, some people paid upwards of £400 per ticket. Regardless, what we did get was an electric evening of some of the finest pop music about, and a reminder that while Billie is already well-established, a long and illustrious career is ahead as she writes her name into music folklore.