Billie Eilish at the T-Mobile Center. // Photo by Brock Wilbur

When a three-story-tall metal cage is lowered into the middle of the T-Mobile Center, it usually means you’re in for a night of professional wrestling. In lieu of a WWE, Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour took place on Saturday, November 16th, filling the Thunderdome’s center stage with emotional wrestling. For what it’s worth, the sold-out Eilish Octagon Battle was infinitely louder than my recent visits to T-Mobile for dudes fighting.

Nat & Alex Wolff opened the evening with a solid 11-song set. The Brothers, formerly of Nickelodeon The Naked Brothers BandThey paid tribute to the band right at the start of their performance with a cover of “If That’s Not Love.” After about three albums worth of material as an independent, mature pop duo, the set found two musicians desperately searching for stability between worlds. In songs like “Winter Baby” you could see a dark, powerful rock group – punctuated by stagecraft, including a guitar solo so ferocious it split a musician’s lip. Some real bangers like this were interspersed with some of the most generic and forgettable tracks imaginable.

Billie Eilish at the T-Mobile Center. // Photo by Brock Wilbur

As someone who considers myself a fan, I find it frustrating to watch artists walk a fine line between the safest path and a dangerous cliff where their talent shines through. And there’s no chronological release plan for any of these tracks – no direct path to one end point or another, but rather the annoyance of seeing a career constrained by some constraints that prevent them from taking songwriting risks after a life on the stage . The set’s standout moments were more than enough to strengthen my faith in the band, and the other songs were simply unforgettable filler – on a tour where it was go big or go home. Here’s hoping their upcoming LP offers a chance to get where they belong.

After the opening movement there was a long break that could easily have accommodated a whole extra number. I’m glad that wasn’t the case to avoid a crowded evening where the powder keg gathered in downtown KC had a clear, well-defined purpose. A giant metal Faraday cage was lowered onto the stage, and a pleasant hour passed before Billie Eilish arrived to breach the containment and burn the house down.

As the light fell on T-Mobile, a box of digital distortion was broadcast in pulsating white beams in the center of the room on a floor-filling stage that was aligned at the center of the venue rather than pushed to one side. When the box finally lifted off the ground, Eilish was given a flat, lit stage for the rest of the evening, with her minimal group of band members set back to the point where they were barely visible. The effect was a minimalist, equitable perspective where every seat in the house had an equally good view. The sparse production, with no props or people, provided the perfect physical manifestation of Eilish’s work – a kind of dreamlike wanderlust, as if a child were running around in his bedroom, singing to himself and to himself, and wandering in his own imagination as he performed a floating, unmoored audience of a million and none at once.

Billie Eilish at the T-Mobile Center. // Photo by Brock Wilbur

Except for the places where fire exploded from the stage or a million lasers devastated the room. This was arena rock in the truest sense of the word.

Billie Eilish at the T-Mobile Center. // Photo by Brock Wilbur

The “Hit Me Hard And Soft Tour” brought a balanced mix of songs from all of Eilish’s major LPs, along with a few sampled surprises and of course the sparse destruction of “What Was I Made For?” Barbie Soundtrack as the crowning conclusion of the evening. The consistency of the discography allowed for structure and order to drive the ebbs and flows of dynamics, with the crescendo of the first third cut short by a stripped down section in the middle of the show where Billie handled the heavy emotional load alongside her backing vocalists and an acoustic guitar to process the socio-political moment with care and honest calm.

Around this time, Eilish admitted that she had been sick for the last few days of the tour and didn’t really notice it until the middle of the show in Chicago. It would have been impossible to tell without the odd cough or two – which made her apology for “maybe sounding hoarse tonight” seem more humorous than it was probably intended. It would have been hard to imagine her sounding more like her; one of the few artists who only becomes more sonically involved with the brand when she’s working through something.

One of the best concerts in KC since the pandemic. It was also packed from floor to ceiling for two hours and had some of the loudest reactions I’ve ever heard in the venue. Eilish couldn’t have been in better shape and was clearly having as much fun as everyone else in the building as she endured two hours of angst, dissociation and revenge plots.

Setlist:

Hit me hard and soft
Happier than ever
When we all fall asleep, where do we go?

Billie Eilish set list
CHIHIRO
LUNCH
NDA
That’s why I am
WILD FLOWERS
when the party is over
THE DINER
ilomilo
villain
THE BIGGEST
Your power
SLIM
TV
bury a friend
Oxytocin
Guess
everything I wanted
beautiful / I don’t want to be you anymore / sea eyes
L’AMOUR DE MA VIE
What was I created for?
Happier than ever
BIRDS OF ONE FEATHER

Nat & Alex Wolff set list
Public places
Rolling around
If That’s Not Love (Naked Brothers Band cover)
Winter baby
Lucky
All over you
When I’m going to die
Backup plan
Gentle kissing session
All my plans (shake)
Glue