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Like a fever, like I\u2019m burning alive, like a sign. Billie Eilish<\/strong>.<\/p>\n To be or not to be. To live with intention. Or abandon. To inflame or placate. To perform or be performative. To stage or disengage. To exist in all that remains. To burn out or fade away. To be happier than ever, happily ever after.<\/p>\n The duality of life, the matchup of light and dark, of hard and soft. Youthful exuberance and entrenched social constructs, a passion to detonate a predisposed fate, are a heavy weight, but the planet, and perhaps, the human race, doesn\u2019t have time to wait for the sequel to saving grace.<\/p>\n As someone led by existentialism, asking the proverbial questions, \u201cWhen We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?\u201d and \u201cWhat Was I Made For?\u201d Billie Eilish has fought stereotypes, the weight of the spotlight and the trappings of hype and has not only survived but thrived by being true to her vision while exploring the definition of existence.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n With Eilish, I see a through-line from Pink Floyd<\/strong> to The Cure<\/strong> to Nine Inch Nails<\/strong> to Evanescence<\/strong>. At their core was a hopeless romanticism, navigating the essence of dynamics, expressing the beauty, frailty, and credulity of living, loving, and just being.<\/p>\n Emotions have rhythms, do not follow rhyming schemes, nor a 4\/4 beat; they flow, they retreat, they burrow, they explode, they sear with veracity, with heat, with waves that cascade, with cuts that bleed. A head like a hole can go from comfortably numb to an effervescent wildflower behind the ear of \u201cChihiro<\/strong>\u201d on a brisk fall day. Or a sonorous day in May.<\/p>\n Spirited away. Bring me to life.<\/p>\n Much like my recent visit to a towering cathedral in the holy city of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Espa\u00f1a (reputedly where St. James is buried), there was a glow in the faces of the patrons approaching a nondescript, corporately-named arena in Phoenix. They were about to be in the presence of one of the apostles of the colossal, a spokesperson, an icon, a highly decorated voice of a generation. Some would say the greatest. There\u2019s that weight getting in the way.<\/p>\n As someone who was among the 250 people that went to see Billie Eilish at The Hi Hat<\/strong> in Highland Park in the summer of 2017, an EP release party, staged in conjunction with Interscope<\/strong>, to celebrate her Don\u2019t Smile at Me<\/strong> EP, you could say I\u2019m an OG, though distinctly remember basically having to beg two friends to go with me. Revisionist history has surely changed their story.<\/p>\n I then admired her from afar as her rocketship soared into the stars. I looped back in during her triumphant Coachella<\/strong> set in 2022 as a part of her \u201cHappier Than Ever\u00a0Tour<\/strong>.\u201d It remains to this day one of my favourites (next to The White Stripes<\/strong>, Massive Attack<\/strong>, LCD Soundsystem<\/strong>, Lana Del Rey<\/strong>, No Doubt<\/strong>, and Madonna<\/strong> in the Sahara tent). It was incendiary. Precipitation without rain. With her continued ascension into the heavens, I felt like the \u201cHMHAS Tour<\/strong>\u201d would find her at the peak of her powers, traversing the dark side of the moon as she pushes past Andromeda.<\/p>\n How does one attend an instantaneously sold-out arena run without an invitation? In the second ring of hell, punishing us for our sins of lust, or what could be referred to as the downward spiral of the fallen. Can Cleopatra or Helen of Troy help a ticketless boy? Needless to say, sans a non-disclosure agreement, the markup on what I paid in 2017 was 3,000 percent, with one quick tap three hours before doors.<\/p>\n An espresso tonic in the form of a secondary market colonic.<\/p>\n With the equivalent of a retina scan, I attained my GA wristband. Opening the evening was Lucy Dacus<\/strong>, known for her work with Phoebe Bridgers<\/strong> and Julien Baker<\/strong> in boygenius<\/strong>, while also being recognized for her acclaimed solo career over the past ten years. Backed by a four-piece band, Dacus admirably amplified her genius with stirring renditions of \u201cAnkles<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cLimerence<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cChristine<\/strong>,\u201d and her mega-hit, \u201cNight Shift<\/strong>,\u201d which she coincidentally wrote nine years prior in Valley Bar, just a few blocks away from the venue. She mentioned it was her first time playing an arena, and she would go on to play the three final dates of the tour.<\/p>\n Wish you were here.<\/p>\n As sustainability, climate change and helping to educate\/empower people to take action, including the power to vote for candidates with ethics and a conscience, a video ran after Lucy\u2019s set highlighting efforts Eilish has undertaken in helping to heal and advance the planet.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Anticipation gripped our attention.<\/p>\n It was show 103, which seemed to be about the collective temperature of our cranial expenditure, a fever of seismic proportions set to tango with dopamine and serotonin.<\/p>\n Bloodflowers.<\/p>\n With a stage that mostly stretched the entire floor under a gigantic, shiftable LED board, a digital cage soon appeared on the stage, which reminded me of the cube Alison Wonderland<\/strong> used for her Whyte Fang<\/strong> side-project and also recalled the enclosed container Lorde<\/strong> used during her Melodrama<\/strong> trek in 2018. The musicians\/singers accompanying Billie took their place, partially submerged. No one would have obstructed the view; fans from wherever in the stands would gaze with the same vantage. The democratization of access.<\/p>\n With rousing fanfare and thousands of phones capturing the moment, the cage rose to the soft embrace of a melodic interface and off we went into a safe space of entertainment at the nexus of hypnosis and elation.<\/p>\n Bittersuite.<\/p>\n As suspected, with a hundred shows under her belt since September of last year, Eilish easily shifted with assured confidence from rapturous to an even higher gear, inciting thrills with powerful vocals mixed with moves like Jagger<\/strong> doing laps in a crazy eight, running to each inflection point of the biodome, making 20,000 people feel at home.<\/p>\n After getting everyone to burn off their expectations with a furious start of hitting hard, she took a moment to sit down and unhook the fuselage, asking everyone to live in the moment and be completely silent for 60 ticks of the clock so she could loop her vocals in real time for the bed of \u201cWhen the party\u2019s over.\u201d<\/p>\n It was serenely beautiful and gloriously elegant, and yes, as P!nk<\/strong> once declared, the party was just getting started.<\/p>\n Performing for an hour and 45 minutes with no encore, Eilish played all of her Grammy<\/strong>-nominated third studio album, Hit Me Hard and Soft<\/strong> (with a couple tracks featured as transitions) and fan favourites from earlier in her career including \u201cbury a friend<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cOxytocin<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cTherefore I Am<\/strong>,\u201d \u201cilomilo<\/strong>\u201d (an homage to a puzzle video game where soulmates ilo (red) and milo (blue) must navigate the matrix to reconnect) and, of course, \u201cOcean Eyes<\/strong>,\u201d which she played solo on electric piano and which was celebrating its tenth anniversary on this very night (from when it first posted to Soundcloud<\/strong>). Fans regaled the occasion with handmade proclamations.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Throughout the show, Eilish used visuals and staging to engage fans, but veered from overstimulation that can corrupt today\u2019s attention deficit bandwidths.<\/p>\n Let us sing and dance and engage in communal togetherness. This is what we were made for. That and spreading the gospel as disciples.<\/p>\n As was pushed to the forefront of modern multi-media staging by Rosal\u00eda<\/strong> on her \u201cMotomami Tour<\/strong>,\u201d Eilish utilized a handheld camera on several occasions, this one fashioned like a Super 8, to add an intimate element, both of herself and for fans within her silhouette during \u201cbad guy<\/strong>\u201d and \u201ceverything I wanted<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n L\u2019AMOUR. DE. MA. VIE.<\/p>\n The French resistance meets the French connection. It\u2019s never just a numbers game; destiny is a real-life prophecy. If your top streaming song is about an infinity-skewed affection that sticks like rubber cement before coalescing into a timeless union, it\u2019s the birds of a feather that light the sky with incandescent eyes, the greatest love of our lives.<\/p>\n I knew you in another life In a world that\u2019s evolving and crawling, hard and soft, with reverence and decadence, a champion for humanity in all its brilliance and divisions showed us a portal to the open door. One that will change the whether it\u2019s now or forevermore.<\/p>\n And just like that, those of us close to the stage were showered in Blohsh rain, in this case, thousands of paper-thin cut-outs of her genderless stick figure logo that represents her brand, her rebellious spirit and systemic kineticism.<\/p>\n In this day and age, the nexus of art and commerce is never far apart, so as fans were exiting, they were offered a small trial size of YOUR TURN II<\/strong>, Eilish\u2019s new vanilla-imbued eau de parfum (hints of fig nectar, black tea, cassis leaves, pimento berries). And at the conclusion of the tour in San Francisco, an announcement came forth that Eilish and James Cameron<\/strong> (of Avatar<\/strong> fame) are collaborating on a 3D concert film of the tour to be released in March.<\/p>\n Guessing blue will be its hue.<\/p>\n Hoping we don\u2019t have to wear those damn paper glasses to experience the third dimension, perhaps Warby Parker<\/strong> can generate a prescription to soften our hardwired predispositions with a progressive carbon-neutral lens, a high definition distillation of memories and keepsakes for hopeless romantics in pursuit of a higher truth. When red meets blue. It\u2019s my turn, too.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Set List:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 A-Stage \u2014<\/p>\n Intro (contains elements of \u201cTHE GREATEST\u201d)<\/p>\n 1. CHIHIRO \u2014 A-Stage \u2014 13. bury a friend \u2014 B-Stage \u2014<\/p>\n 15. Guess (Charli xcx cover) \u2014 A-Stage \u2014 17. lovely \/ BLUE \/ ocean eyes BLUE (\u201cBORN BLUE\u201d version) Outro<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Article Views: 135
Like a fever, like I\u2019m burning alive, like a sign. Billie Eilish. To be…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":531159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,53171,235423,138236,178800,1589,4000,184735,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-531158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-billie-eilish","12":"tag-electronic-pop","13":"tag-lucy-dacus","14":"tag-mortgage-matchup-center","15":"tag-phoenix","16":"tag-pop","17":"tag-show-review","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115930650654836650","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
You had that same look in your eyes
I love you, don\u2019t act so surprised<\/p>\n
2. LUNCH
3. NDA \/ Therefore I Am
4. WILDFLOWER
5. when the party\u2019s over (live looped vocals intro)
6. THE DINER
7. ilomilo
8. bad guy
9. THE GREATEST
10. Your Power (Acoustic)
11. SKINNY
12. TV (Acoustic)<\/p>\n
BITTERSUITE (Transition; shortened)<\/p>\n
14. Oxytocin<\/p>\n
16. everything i wanted<\/p>\n
BLUE (Transition)<\/p>\n
18. L\u2019AMOUR DE MA VIE (With \u201cOVER NOW (EXTENDED EDIT)\u201d)
19. What Was I Made For?
20. Happier Than Ever (Shortened)
21. BIRDS OF A FEATHER<\/p>\n