[ATTENDED: October 23, 2025] Billie Eilish
Our history with Billie Eilish shows is interesting. I bought tickets in 2019 to see her in NJ. Then COVID came along and the show was postponed and then cancelled. I bought tickets again in 2021 and we finally got to see her in 2022. When she announced a show at Wells Fargo Center in 2024 I wasn’t sure if my daughter cared that much and so I didn’t get tickets. The show sold out and everyone raved about it and she was bummed we didn’t go. And then, ever so nicely, Billie announced that the tour was continuing and she was going to play in Philly AGAIN at the same venue. So this time I was able to surprise her. The tickets weren’t as close as they were in Newark, but her stage design was a huge rectangle on the floor and she came pretty close to us throughout the show.
And this show was basically the same as the 2024 show. The only real difference was the middle acoustic songs that she and her backing singers played. And the fact that the venue was then the Wells Fargo Center and is now the XFinity Mobile Arena.
As happened half the time at this venue, the traffic was terrible. We left early and assumed we had plenty of time. But even when we pulled in the lot, all of the ADA was taken! Good grief. However, it was cool that we parked right near the Billie 18 wheeler which had her logo on it (photo op!) Nevertheless, we were going to miss some if not all of Young Miko, the opening act. I didn’t know anything about her. She seems to be a chill rapper who sings in English and Spanish.
Since we has already missed half of her set, we decided to just get on the merch line (which moved really quickly!). Having acquired our merch, I did the typical dad thing of figuring out that if half of the people there bought a shirt she made $500K on merch alone. But good for her and even better for her because she happily donates to good causes and calls out rich men who don’t.
We had pretty great seats, unexpectedly. I mean, I knew where the seats were that I bought, but I didn’t expect them to be so good. So her stage was a square (rectangle?) on the floor of the arena. There was a vertical lighting rig in the middle of the square on which they projected videos and also had a crane of some sort that lifted her up and down throughout the show.
The show started with some videos on the middle screens–mostly static. And then suddenly Billie was floating above the screens. On either side of this big screen in a lower area were her band members–2 on either side facing each other. We were closest to the bass and drums.
When Billie lowered to the stage, she proceeded to run (pretty fast) all around the stage. She sang and waved to all sides of the square. She stood at corners and sang. She lay down in some places. She made sure that everyone had a good view of her.
I don’t really know her new album all that well, but she is such a great performer that I didn’t care. I enjoyed her delivery, her energy and the whole entertainment package of her show. Like last time the girls screaming around me were far louder than the music. In fact, listening back to the videos I took, the audience is always louder than Billie (but are in fine rhythm).
Perhaps the most interesting part of the show was when she asked everyone to be quiet so she could loop her vocals for When the Party’s Over. She explained that she needed silence or the looping wouldn’t work. People were okay and then people yelled at them to shut up and the Billie started and of course someone shouted I love you and Billie just shook her head and carried on (that voice did not get looped that I could hear).
During Bad Guy (easily my favorite of her songs), she grabbed one of the many cameras ringing the stage and ran around with it showing all of the band members. And of course the crowd shouted every word. Duh! (more…)
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