Like the Madonna of old, brilliant Billie has A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING
Billie Eilish
Rock en Seine, Paris Reading festival, tonight HHHHH
Prom 48: Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions With Jules Buckley Orchestra And Cory Henry
Royal Albert Hall, London
Available on BBC Sounds
HHHHH
Billie Eilish should, by rights, be falling apart. At 17 she became the youngest person ever to top the UK album chart. By 18 she was a global superstar. At 20 she became the youngest solo act to headline Glastonbury. Now, at 21, she really ought to have the decency to be checking into rehab.
Instead she has just had her second UK No1 single with What Was I Made For?, the song that brings out the existential angst in Barbie. And tonight she will headline Reading, the festival where people even younger than her gather to forget , or celebrate, their GCSE results. Eilish, who was home-schooled in California, may need to do her homework about that.
In Paris on Wednesday she headlined the Rock en Seine festival. Coming on at 10pm on a blazing hot night, armed with only three words of French – ‘Je t’aime’ – she wowed a crowd of 40,000. For 90 minutes the air crackled with that special energy you find when a generation of young people sees someone in the flesh who represents them.
This is pretty much the same show that Eilish and her brother Finneas brought to Glastonbury and British arenas last year but there are two significant differences. One is that she has added the Barbie song. The middle of the show, when the atmosphere can sag, is now lit up by a beautiful sadness.
The other difference is in Eilish herself. Her voice is richer, her presence more assured. To look at, with her baggy sweatshirt and her patterned tights, she could be any young American in Paris, but when she talks to the fans she’s a grown-up who knows how to put her guests at ease.
Her music, once just whispery synth-pop, now incorporates a little bit of everything from techno to cabaret. She does something Madonna used to do, keeping an ear on the cutting edge, borrowing some of the clicks and tricks, while still making the sound all her own. But she has a very different persona. She’s not a queen bee: she’s a people-pleaser who involves the crowd by asking them to sing along (‘a little more quietly please’) and then to crouch and jump, which leads to the night’s biggest cheer.
The Proms have discovered soul. Last year they paid tribute to Aretha Franklin, last month they put on a rapturous night of Northern Soul and last Monday they celebrated 50 years of Stevie Wonder’s album Innervisions.
The role of Wonder, complete with the shades, the smiles and the vibes, went to a fellow former child prodigy. Cory Henry, who played the organ in church in Brooklyn aged three and later found fame with Snarky Puppy, brought the tone that Wonder’s songs demand, half conversational, half searingly emotional.
The conductor, Jules Buckley, brought his own orchestra, memories of buying Innervisions in 1990s Aylesbury and a gang of arrangers who worked with him on the Aretha Prom.
Rather than drown the music in strings, they let the rhythm call the tune. Soon, every person in the Hall was moving, except Sir Henry Wood, who might have been, too, if he hadn’t been cast in bronze.
The fast songs were fizzy, the protest songs punchy, the slow ones deliciously mournful. Whenever the rafters needed shaking, Henry was joined by a woman.
Laura Mvula added drama, Lianne La Havas delicacy. Finally Sheléa, one of Wonder’s backing singers, bowled us over with Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer, lifted us up with Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing and got us dancing with Superstition.