She’s right, her career since making her Coachella debut in 2019 has been incredibly fast, already with two top chart albums, a Bond theme, seven Grammy Awards and the hearts of almost every child with TikTok on the endless list of achievements of. Now one more thing to add: at 20, this interpretation makes her the youngest festival headliner in Coachella’s history. But it is these shy confessions and the say-you-feel correlation that have helped her become one of the world’s biggest stars. And it has the annoying show to suit: partly vampire rave, partly Disney fantasy, leading the audience to dizzying heights (and not just because they perform a bunch of songs on a cherry picker). Eilish is known for its silent / loud, whisper / boss dynamics, and it’s on widescreen levels here, in an emotional yo-yo that beats incredibly one minute and surprisingly familiar the next. She opens with Happier Than Ever’s full drumming, all-rounding pop punk, dressed in a white graffiti shirt, shorts and knee pads, her hair in black buns, like a missing member of the Suicide Squad. The scene is dramatically dark, bathed in blood red, with only brother Finneas and drummer Andrew Marshall behind. A walk that protrudes into the audience gives Eilish a catwalk where she can walk or play, occasionally breaking into a sensual shake, consciously playing with her perception of being sexualized or not (as she did when she appeared in a corset for the cover of VOGUE last year). But just pushed to the floor with the electric pulse of My Strange Addiction, is the sweeping piano ballad Lovely, for which singer Khalid participates in her scene. Likewise, the turbulent industrial penalty You Should See Me In A Crown, which has people thumping as if it were a Euphoria party scene, is followed by Billie Bossa Nova brunette samba. Billie Eilish appears on stage. Photo: Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for Coachella These changes in tone can be annoying if it were not for Eilish’s magnetism and excellent voice. On her two albums, in 2019 When We All Fall Sleep, Where Do We Go? and “Happier Than Ever” of 2021, takeaways were often her murmur – which undoubtedly changed the sound of modern pop. And yet her voice can also cut glass, soar in places like a Pixar movie, and never miss a beat. She is no more obvious than the brilliant Bon Iver-style music, Your Power, which she performs in front of the stage on acoustic guitar with her brother, the architect of her sound, and her airy face almost sparkling. It is also her charm that carries the most unexpected moment of her performance, when she brings to the stage a man who, in a move that immediately ages anyone over 30 by two additional decades, is introduced as Damon Albarn by Gorillaz. Albarn – who recently faced a similar young pop titan, Taylor Swift – accompanies her to sing at Getting Older as the video of her and Phineas as children combines screens (perhaps because some Twitter fans apparently confused with Eilish Dad). He stays for the lively funk of Gorillaz’s Feel Good Inc, which gets the biggest boop of the night. This is unless you count the countless dancers who frame it for Oxytocin. The Eilish show, which just toured the United States, has been noted for its minimalism, which never lowers the star, so it is fascinating when, earlier in the set, the latex-wrapped army surrounds it and Pogo seems to be able to shoot down an alien spaceship. There is an interesting contrast between the sharpness of Eilish’s songs and the way she speaks to her audience – often as if she were about to lead an ecstatic dance session. “I want to be thankful we’re alive,” he declares before When The Party’s Over (his celestial introduction here does not resemble the beginning of Madonna’s Like A Prayer). He then asks them to take deep breaths (which they would probably do if so many of them did not run back to their cars). It may sound like a fictitious touch, but it underscores Eilish’s obvious lack of selfishness as a singer, as well as the moment when she finally lifts a cowboy hat over her head and fools around with her final goth-pop anthem, Bad Guy. He is here to play, to kill and best of all, to stay.