The Pyramid stage’s youngest ever headliner looks entirely at home, giving an imperious, hugely engaging performance
It’s not just that Billie Eilish is, as she’s keen to point out, the youngest headliner in Glastonbury’s history … it’s that she’s the first mainstream pop star – as in the kind of pop star that tweenage girls scream at – to headline Glastonbury. A few years ago, the announcement of an artist like that filling the main Friday night slot on the Pyramid stage would probably have generated a degree of controversy. Some berk would have got up a petition about it. But in 2022, the appearance of Billie Eilish’s name at the top of the bill passed without comment.
Whether that’s evidence that Glastonbury’s audience is skewing younger, or that Glastonbury is becoming more pop-facing in the artists it books, or that Eilish is considered of a slightly different stripe to her peers, is an interesting question. Watching her bounce from the industrial electro pop of You Should See Me in a Crown, to the kitschy lounge stylings of Billie’s Bossanova, to the Beatles-y Getting Older, to the Dr Dre-influenced All the Good Girls Goto Hell, one is struck by the sense that she’s certainly more musically eclectic than most of her peers. And if you get the impression that festivals aren’t necessarily her natural habitat – “you guys are troupers, with your tents and shit”, she opines at one point – from the moment she appears, she looks entirely at home.
