Billie Eilish, Shepherd’s Bush Empire, review: forget Beatlemania - welcome to Billiemania
The screams began as soon as Brooklyn Beckham was spotted in the audience, and didn’t stop until Billie Eilish had left the Shepherd’s Bush Empire an hour later.
Drained fathers dragged their hysterical charges home with a hand to their temples, one muttering that even Beatles fans paused for air during songs.
Born in Los Angeles, Eilish is the 17-year-old wunderkind who’s dominating the charts with her complex, melancholic pop that’s adored by everyone from schoolgirls to Foo Fighter frontman Dave Grohl. She went viral in 2015 (aged just 13) after casually uploading a song to SoundCloud for her school teacher’s consideration. Co-written with her brother Finneas (Alastair from the hit comedy series Glee), Ocean Eyes impressed for its imaginative lyrics, catchy, contemplative melody, and for Eilish’s voice – an eerily beautiful thing, as delicate as wind chimes in the breeze.
Eilish was almost immediately signed to Interscope Records, and in 2017 released a debut EP, Don’t Smile at Me, in which romantic ballads (My Boy) collide with pained meditations on depression (Lovely), as well as musings from the mind of a psychopath (Bellyache). Her very first song, written when she was four, was about falling into a black hole; Fingers Crossed was inspired by zombie apocalypse TV series The Walking Dead; and her upcoming debut album, When We Fall Asleep, questions death. Got the theme?
A glance at her videos, in which spiders crawl out of her mouth and blue tears of paint roll down her cheeks, confirms that Eilish, who recently told fans she has Tourette’s Syndrome, has made nihilism part of her personal brand. She’s a Morrissey for the Instagram generation, and, with more than 31 million monthly listens on Spotify (that’s seven million more than Taylor Swift), it’s clear that sadness continues to sell.
When performing however, Eilish leaves the tears at home. Arriving bang on time and smiling from ear to ear, the singer bounded across the stage like an excited puppy, staring down at her fans and holding their hands. While she probably sang beautifully, it was hard to know, since the audience joined in with every word, turning Eilish’s dark, whispering tunes into shouty singalongs – the giant black spider on stage behind her looked more incongruous by the minute.
Not that Eilish minded. On the contrary, she turned the mic to the crowd regularly, prompting further fits of screams and even a mosh pit to form. Eventually, however, as the hysteria became overwhelming, she tried to calm things down. “‘Let’s all relax, OK? Everyone take a step back. Everyone take a deep breath,” she said, while inhaling and exhaling loudly into the mic. A blissful moment of quiet ensued, and then the screaming started all over again.
Her fans no doubt had the time of their lives, but anyone there for the music should have stayed at home.
