Billie Eilish was last in Sweden in 2019. Then she was a mere 17-year-old artist who had knocked out an entire youth generation with a new, dark, and peculiar pop sound. She had created it together with her brother Finneas O'Connell, with whom she has collaborated since then.
She played at a sold-out and vibrant Fryshuset in Stockholm, and then advanced to the Lollapalooza festival the same year.
Best Buddy
Now that she's coming back, it's for two performances at Avicii Arena in Stockholm. But what will the fans be met with – who is Billie Eilish in 2025?
A kind of best buddy, according to P3's music journalist Tina Mehrafzoon:
Those who will attend the concerts will, of course, go for the music, but also for the feeling that Billie is a friend. And for the feeling that you can be exactly who you are in that room with her. Her performances are incredibly permissive, she says.
Mehrafzoon compares Eilish to other artists like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Sabrina Carpenter, and means that Billie Eilish has a kind of accessibility that the others sometimes lack. While Eilish's colleagues make a big deal of their celebrity and cash in on it on social media, she keeps a lower commercial profile.
She doesn't play by the same celebrity rules as other artists do. She has an integrity that is unique to her. At the same time, that integrity doesn't prevent fans from feeling close to her – there's no distance between them, she says.
Alternative Room
Mehrafzoon also believes that the two Sweden performances will be filled with an audience that feels they can be themselves. As a spectator at a Billie Eilish concert, you don't need to dress up in glittering clothes to feel at home:
She creates a room where you can be a little alternative. You can come in a sloppy shirt and dad's old tie, with half your hair green, and still be completely normal.
But in the end, it's still the music that will attract the audience to the arena, Mehrafzoon believes:
It will be a well-worked-out show with sound and light, but where you'll also be able to sing out your innermost. Billie Eilish and her brother are incredible at pushing pop boundaries. There's a duality and playfulness in her music that also appeals to the more music-conscious audience, she says.
Name: Billie Eilish.
Age: 23 years.
Background: Broke through in 2015 with the debut single "Ocean eyes". The debut album "When we fall asleep, where do we go?", which included the massive hit "Bad guy", came in 2019.
Has won nine Grammy Awards, an Oscar for best film music, broken twenty Guinness world records, received seven MTV Video Music Awards, four Brit Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards.
Current: With performances at Avicii Arena in Stockholm on April 23 and 24.
