At some point in the middle of Billie Eilish's show at MSG on Friday night (2/18), she paused to talk about how much we all have to be grateful for, and exclaimed, "We're at Madison Square Garden!", as the crowd responded with an uproar of cheers. And we really do. Just a month and a half ago, there were almost no shows happening in NYC at all, and now, here we all were, as part of a packed house at Manhattan's largest indoor venue, two years after Billie was first supposed to play the venue until COVID got in the way. And judging by the way Billie emphasized "Madison Square Garden," she seemed genuinely excited to be headlining one of the most iconic arenas in the world, for her first of two consecutive nights, bookended by Long Island and New Jersey arena shows. Her rise to fame has been truly anomalous, and I think even Billie is still a little shocked that an artist whose songwriting process is so DIY and whose music is often so anti-mainstream has gotten to this level in just a few years. Still, whenever she performed, it was clear that she was born to be a superstar. It's not just that Billie's music has resonated with such a large, diverse group of people -- as Friday night's crowd proved -- it's also that she can command an arena with the best of them.
The show opened with Billie's brother/core collaborator Finneas and her touring drummer Andrew Marshall on stage together, pounding away at some thunderous percussion, and then Billie rose up from beneath the stage, was met by an eruption of screams, and went into "Bury A Friend," the song that gave her 2019 debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? its title. Right off the bat, she had the massive crowd in the palm of her hands, and that never let up once throughout the course of her 90-minute set. Just two songs later, she seamlessly transitioned "NDA" into "Therefore I Am," just like she does on her 2021 sophomore album Happier Than Ever, and by the time she hit the chorus of the latter song, the crowd was drowning her out with their singing. "Therefore I Am" is one of Billie's biggest hits, but even when she was playing deeper cuts, so many people sang every word.