(Quebec) Quebec City has rarely been as cool and popular as this weekend, when Billie Eilish presented the world premiere of her show at the Videotron Center Hit Me Hard and Softan inventive and captivating event, as beautiful as it was good.
For many fans of popular music in Quebec, this evening of September 29 was the event of the year, the concert not to be missed. Taylor Swift did not set foot in the province during her monumental tour Eras. Beyoncé only stopped in Toronto last year. Certainly, Charli XCX has just given her presence at Place Bell, and Sabrina Carpenter will be at the Bell Center in mid-October. But Billie Eilish decided that her tour would begin at the Videotron Center in Quebec City, no less. Nearly 20,000 people, from Quebec and elsewhere in the world, took part in this fabulous communion.
We attended Billie Eilish’s first large-scale concert, the one in support of her very first album. Even before that, the singer already had a good relationship with Quebec, which she has maintained in recent years, often representing herself in front of her Quebec audience. Each time, the moment was exceptional. The bar she set for herself was high, especially since her most recent album is (in our humble opinion) her best to date. It was also his very first show without his greatest accomplice, his brother Finneas, by his side since always. “It’s overwhelming,” she admitted to the crowd at the end of the show, even though (spoiler alert!), she excelled on stage despite the absence of her sidekick.
To change things up a bit, Billie Eilish chose a stage in the center of the arena for this show. If the idea of a 360-degree show is always impressive on paper, it is each time a little disappointing to only have the artist in front of you for half of the concert. The singer compensated, however, by often running from one end of the stage to the other, with boundless energy, and the majority of spectators had at least a profile view when she was not performing. to dance from left to right.
The event (it was one of those shows that is much more than just a concert) began with an impressive introduction consisting of a few notes of The GreatestBillie Eilish appearing perched on a large cube turning out to be four screens. Moreover, the stage itself turned out to be a huge screen, with the addition of a huge raised structure facing all the spectators at once. The stage work was grandiose, these screens playing an important role in the staging.
Landing with both feet on stage, the singer continued on Chihiroanother of the new songs released this summer. Billie had the most original style of all, of course, wearing a red football jersey, matching bike shorts, a white bandana, a black cap and knee-high socks accessorized with skate knee pads.
Success Lunch made the crowd even more agitated than the previous second. A little return in time then with NDAwhich melted into Therefore I Am (with flame jets). For Wildflower (with the arrival of the two singers), she positioned herself in the middle of the stage. “I’m going to try something, but you’re going to have to be quiet and this is the only time I’m going to ask you that,” she said, sitting on the ground, before recording layers of voices, which she duplicated it in a pedal loops to accompany each other on when the party’s over.
The 18,000 people remained completely silent during one of the most beautiful moments of the show, where only the voices of Billie Eilish resonated. She lay down to continue singing (which in itself is not simple) on a white-lit stage.
The Diner, ilomilo, bad guy followed, Eilish showing each time, and until the end of her performance, that she has a voice capable of many things. Soft when she wants to serenade, powerful when she wants to push it to its maximum, as in the grandiose piece The Greatestwhich she performed sitting on the platform on which she had arrived.
Billie the unifier
True admirers of Billie Eilish don’t care about the distance and came en masse from all over Quebec and the world to attend this show.
PHOTO VALERIE MARCOUX, THE SUN
Some spectators spent two nights and three long days camping in front of the Videotron Center to be in the front row of the concert.
On the bus that took us from Montreal to Quebec, we spotted at least three passengers making the same journey as us to attend the concert. Including our seatmate, who made the journey alone, ready to do anything not to miss the one she has been following since the very beginning.
On TikTok, numerous videos of admirers documenting their pilgrimage to the Videotron Center have been circulating in recent days. Some come from France, others from England and even Australia.
Quebec City thus saw its tourist season extended with the presence of Billie Eilish and her legion of loyal admirers, many of whom lined up and camped for three days to secure a place as close as possible to their favorite artist . Several hotels in the city center were full. The one where we stayed was teeming with teenage girls whose clothing style was reminiscent of the young singer’s.
“You’re going to the Eilish concert too, I suppose?” “, our taxi driver, a self-confessed “boomer” who did not find the quality of music “in time” in Billie Eilish’s music, gave us a welcome word. Like it or not, the name of the American singer was on everyone’s lips and in everyone’s minds.
Billie the talented
This evening was also the time to discover the songs on the show program. For a rare time in the age of social networks, the surprise was total. Speculation was already rife online, but Billie Eilish was able to be surprising, offering a lineup of songs that throughout the evening shifted the mood from serenity to excitement. His repertoire is the right one for ballads and electro to coexist without embarrassment.
Read “Billie Eilish Makes Her Own Rules”
Accompanied by her backing singers (childhood friends) and her acoustic guitar, she gave way to a very gentle segment after the explosion of The Greatest. Male fantasy, Skinny And TV prolonged the moment.
The ingenious staging allowed this show, without any great artifice, to always be interesting. The impressive light shows, the constant movements of the singer, the movement of the screens and the different effects broadcast on these same screens: this central scene that we feared was actually not so bad at all. Moreover, those who saw the singer’s back almost throughout the show were surprised towards the end to see her appear on a secondary stage for a moment which they were able to enjoy the most. Well thought out, once again.
Eilish stuck to her old hits afterward, with Bury a friend, Oxytocin, Crown, Guess (one of many moments when the arena became a rave), Everything I Wanteda treat for early admirers. After a medley of the recent Blueold ones lovely (with Billie on keyboard), Bored and the megapopular Ocean Eyesthe last part of the show was dedicated to his new songs, those which continued his success and which the fans sang along from start to finish.
The love of my life (whose finale shows so well how Eilish fuses pop music and electro), What was I made for And Happier Than Ever preceded the final piece of the evening, the fabulous Birds of a Featherafter which the singer left the stage, before leaving Quebec and continuing this tour which will do a lot of good to a lot of people.