Billie Eilish played the first of three NZ shows at Spark Arena on Thursday September 8. Photo / Phil Walter, Getty Images
REVIEW:
"Well, hello there," Billie Eilish croons. "It's nice to be back. This feels good."
About 10,000 Kiwis scream back at her. The last time the 20-year-old pop star performed in New Zealand, it was for a pre-pandemic crowd in 2019, before everything changed.
Listening to her play for a packed Spark Arena last night, the last few years do feel a bit like a bad dream.
Eilish toured her first album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go in New Zealand in 2019. Since then, she's won several Grammys, covered Vogue, and become the youngest ever act to headline Glastonbury solo.
Now she's taking her sophomore album Happier Than Ever, released last year, around the world, including three shows in Aotearoa.
As she takes to the stage in a baggy T-shirt and bike shorts, black hair tied up, one thing quickly becomes clear: young Kiwis have missed her over the past few years. And her brother and collaborator Finneas O'Connell, on bass guitar and piano, draws nearly as much applause as she does.
Eilish has the crowd hanging on her words from the first song, a deafening rendition of bury a friend from her first album.
It's not just because of her powerful vocals or those mesmerising blue eyes - it's her ability to encapsulate just about every emotion, from the wistfulness of Ocean Eyes to the bravado of you should see me in a crown and bad guy. The catchy, TikTok-viral Therefore I Am has the entire arena screaming the lyrics with her. She doesn't just sing, she inhabits every word.
A particularly poignant moment comes when she and her brother - her "best friend in the world" perch on stools, guitars in hand, to sing Your Power, her 2021 single about an abusive relationship.
Eilish drops one of her rings on stage, fumbles to put it back on, and pauses halfway through the song to admit it's a hard one to sing, but otherwise doesn't miss a beat.
It's only been seven years since Ocean Eyes made her a household name, but Eilish knows a thing or two about fame. Her second album is about the dark side of being in the public eye - "Things I once enjoyed just keep me employed now," she sings in Getting Older.
Things have certainly changed since she first played for a couple of hundred Kiwis at the Tuning Fork, just next door to Spark Arena.
She's aware of how far she's come, pausing at one point to remind the crowd that Spark was where she played her first ever arena show, after which she "went backstage and bawled".
But as she closes with the title track of her second album, Happier Than Ever, you get the feeling that she really is.
• Billie Eilish plays two more shows at Spark Arena: Friday, September 9 and Saturday, September 10.
Robyn Malcolm's acclaimed TV drama is to air in the UK.