Moments before Billie Eilish stepped onto the main stage at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Saturday, April 16, the video screens caught her still wrapped in an oversized coat, a big grin beneath her shaggy bangs.
At 20, Eilish is the youngest headliner in the history of the long-running event. And despite the fact that she’s already earned more Grammys than she can hold, and just won an Oscar, it was clear throughout her set that she couldn’t quite believe this was happening to her.
“Dude, this is so weird!” she told the crowd at one point. “I should not be headlining this (thing).”
The smiles never left her face. Not as she played hit after hit off her records, not when she was joined on stage by Damon Albarn, one of her musical idols, and not in the face of a chilly and relentless wind either.
Eilish opened with “Bury a Friend,” popping out at the far end of a walkway into the crowd, then bouncing and dancing her way to the stage.
With her band tucked at the top of a ramp at the back of the stage, Eilish cut a tiny figure against the hugeness of her backdrop. But she’s been on stages for years now, and as she slipped into “I Didn’t Change My Number” and “NDA,” there was no nervousness evident.
Highlights early in the set included “My Strange Addiction,” one of eight tracks she played off her debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” and “Idontwannabeyouanymore,” one of 11 numbers of her 2021 album “Happier Than Ever.”
The singer Khalid joined Eilish for “Lovely,” and later her brother Finneas, who has collaborated with her musically for years, did a mini-set of acoustic guitar-driven songs, “I Love You” and “Your Power.”
The production mostly left Eilish alone on stage, though on a few songs, including “Oxytocin,” she was joined by a troupe of latex bodysuit-wearing dancers. At one point she was raised over the crowd on a lift, performing songs such as “Overheated” and “Bellyache.”
For the lovely “Getting Older,” the video screens played home movie clips of Eilish as a child, though midway through she was joined by Damon Albarn of Blur — and Gorillaz and also the Good, the Bad and the Queen — to finish the song.
“This is the craziest (stuff) ever,” Eilish said as she stood beaming next to Albarn. “My first favorite band was the Good, the Bad and the Queen when I was 6 years old. Then Blur and Gorillaz changed my world. Y’all, what the (bleep)? Where do I go from this?”
Where she went was into a second song with Albarn, the Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.,” which also featured Posdnuos of De La Soul on the rap verse.
The final run of her set included one of her loveliest vocals on “When The Party’s Over,” and a few of her biggest hits in “All Good Girls Go To Hell” and “Bad Guy.”
The crowd never reached the density of Friday headliner Harry Styles — the cold wind that blew all day probably contributed to that — and it thinned out even more by the time Eilish finished with “Happier Than Ever,” a title that surely fit the way she felt when the lights went out and her night was done.
