Billie Eilish endures the guy in Barcelona despite the collective delirium – Jenesaispop.com

While Sónar and his unofficial parallel festival, Off Sónar, the tour of ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ (2024) of Billie Eilish has arrived in Barcelona. The first pass, on Saturday, June 14, was held at the Palau Sant Jordi while Sónar’s last day. The second has taken place this Sunday, June 15, while the Tecno of the Off Sónar rumbled from the Poble Espanyol enclosure.

In Barcelona this Sunday a curious atmosphere has been breathed following both events: on the one hand, on the walls of the Plaza España Metro, roles hanging from «Buidem el Sónar, Palestine Lliure» have been seen. On the other, a subway musician has touched the melody of ‘when the party’s over’ to the saxophone.

Billie Eilish has shared brief words about the current state of the world during her second consecutive concert in Barcelona, ​​although she has focused – vaguely – on the “challenges” that the United States currently lives. These words have served him to introduce ‘Your Power’, his most political song, in which he encourages those who hold power, not to “abuse” him. Before and after, the ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ concert has alternated equally intimate moments with other great and epic, honoring the title of the album.

Among the former, an interpretation of ‘when the party’s over’ precious – although without the subway saxophonist – Billie sings accompanied by a vocal harmony recorded live and “loopeada”, and for whose record he asks for maximum silence to the public. It is a rare moment of peace in a concert in which the Screaming Fan is absolutely deafening from the beginning with ‘Chihiro’ to the end with ‘Birds of a Feather’, that a group of people, on the right side of the track, dances taken by the hand and jumping into circles. “Pogo in Midsommar,” they tell us in comments.

The achievement of “hard” songs and songs “Soft” in the Billie Eilish show is enhanced with a scenic production that resorts to the columns of fire in ‘Bury A Friend’, to the recreation of MTV Unplugged in ‘Skinny’ or the special laser type effects on several, colorful but predictable songs.

The main visual element of Billie Eilish’s tour is the spectacular 360 degree stage, located in the middle of the enclosure, which more than a scenario, at times, due to its rectangular and large -scale shape, looks like a racing track. Above the stage, a structure of suspended screens and eight columns of light arranged surrounding the stage make up a very colorful and modern scenery. The most striking, however, is that Billie’s band is not located on a high platform, but quite the opposite: the musicians are placed in two grated graves on the stage itself, which reinforces Eilish’s scenic prominence. In addition, a floating platform emerges on the stage that becomes a cube of screens without you realizing. The scenario is used from end to end, and even a small stage located several meters from the main stage serves Eilish to sing its part of ‘Guess’ and ‘Eventhing I Wanthed’ and from there go down to the pit to greet the public. The concert movement is constant and covers the entire enclosure.

This movement favors a more unequal concert in terms of repertoire, which works better when it respects the original duration of the songs. ‘L’Amour de Ma Vie’ becomes one of the high shows of the show thanks to its epic final Synth-Pop. On the other hand, ‘Happier Than Ever’ sounds thunderous, but is unnecessary. ‘Nda’ and ‘Everytying I Wanted’ recover so short that their inclusion in the setlist seems forced. This attempt to cover too much dazzle pieces such as ‘Lovely’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Ocean Eyes’, played together in a strange Mash-Up, while minor songs like ‘The Dinener’ U ‘Oxytocin’ enjoy greater prominence.

The sand format does not shine Billie’s most intimate songs – which are a majority – because the intense clamor of the public makes each song a homogeneous mass of screams that drown Eilish’s own voice, so much so that sometimes listening to melody and lyrics are impossible. The fury becomes delirium when each gesture of Billie projected on the screen – minimum that is – causes a deafening reaction. The musical proposal and the expression of a mass exaltation are not so important. Is it me or also Billie hallucinates when the public explodes just to see her do anything, how to drink water?

This level of idolatry, added to the extension of a tour that began last year and that already enters its final stretch (14 dates remain), and the fact that Eilish acted in Barcelona last night, translates into an artist who seems something fatigued on stage, not only physically but also and, above all, emotionally. Because Eilish can stick all the races you want on that rectangular platform, but the screens give it away when they focus its face. It should not be easy to endure the rhythm of such a marathon tour, and even less assimilate such a level of popular enardration night after night. But Billie endures the guy. Above all, this absolute fan phenomenon knows triumph when songs like ‘Ilomilo’ seem as great as the classics. It is the triumph of an alternative pop that is already massive.