RL Billie Eilish’s opening concert in New Orleans had it all: Camaraderie, command, charisma

Billie Eilish performs in New Orleans on Friday, Nov. 7, 2025, on the first of her two consecutive nights at a full Smoothie King Center. 

Six songs into the first of her two nights at a full Smoothie King Center, Billie Eilish sat cross-legged and convened a high-tech campfire singalong.

She asked her audience, nicely but firmly, to go against its collective instinct and be quiet. She needed silence so she could record “loops” of her own voice in real time, then stack them together to harmonize with herself on “When the Party’s Over.”

Save the squawk of an EMT’s walkie-talkie and a couple of outliers who were quickly shouted down, the arena did, in fact, go quiet. Once the arrangement’s base of harmonies was built, Eilish laid on her back, playing with her hair as she sang the rest of “When the Party’s Over.”

It was as if she was back in her bedroom at her parents’ house, where she and her co-writer/producer brother, Finneas O’Connell, conceived and recorded the songs that would make her a star.

At only 23, Billie Eilish is a primary force in progressive pop music. Her third studio album, 2024’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft,” continued her string of critical and commercial successes. Like its predecessors, it found fresh ways to showcase her striking soprano and sometimes stark point of view.

Making clever recordings is one thing. Translating them into a compelling concert is something else entirely. But across the hour and 40 minutes that Eilish spent on stage Nov. 7, the necessary charisma, camaraderie, command and high concept all abounded.

In-the-round community

Setting the stage in the center of the arena floor allowed for tickets to be sold around the arena’s entire circumference, bumping capacity up to 16,000. The in-the-round configuration also enhanced the sense of community — everyone faces fellow fans. 

Eilish made a point of working all four sides of the stage, even as an array of LED screens suspended form the rafters gave everyone a straight-on view. Throughout the night, she celebrated her community with the caveat that she is clearly in charge of it.

She first materialized atop a central LED cube in her signature stage attire: baggy, jersey-style shirt and equally baggy gym shorts. Her musicians and two backing vocalists occupied two square pits sunk into the stage, which was itself a giant, horizontal screen.

The chill club pulse of the opening “CHIHIRO” — the first of eight songs from “Hit Me Hard and Soft” to turn up in the setlist — was augmented by icy blue lights. The energy changed entirely as the stage pulsed blue, yellow and red for “LUNCH.” The screams from an audience that skewed heavily young and female were deafening.

Strobe lights and lasers lit up “NDA.” The first of the evening’s fireballs erupted for “Therefore I Am.” After the bathed-in-blue ballad “Wildflower,” she noted that “this song got nominated for two Grammys today!” (for Record and Song of the Year). In the ominous “The Diner,” she assumed the persona and perspective of a stalker.

The Smoothie King Center was where she kicked off her “Happier Than Ever” world tour on Feb. 3, 2022. This past weekend, it was where she opened the final leg of the Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour. So Nov. 7 was, as she put it, “our last ‘first show.’”

To the off-kilter melody of “Bad Guy,” the breakout hit from her 2019 debut album, “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?,” she broadcast off-kilter close-up views of her musicians and singers via a hand-held camera. The song concluded in a rush of skittering breakbeats, red lights and lasers.

The ballad “The Greatest” progressed from acoustic guitar to a climax of big drums and big electric guitar chords. Shifting gears again, she and her two singers sat on stools facing one another for “Your Power.” In “TV,” she urged on louder and louder shouts of the “Maybe I, maybe I, maybe I’m the problem” refrain.

In a nifty bit of stagecraft, she literally popped up on a small, B-stage platform at the end of the arena floor for her remix of Charli XCX’s “Guess,” with its distorted bass and thumping beat. Her own “Everything I Wanted” started as a ballad then resolved with a soaring chorus.

She then hustled along the entire floor-level, barricaded perimeter of the main stage, her arms outstretched for fans to touch, her fist closed to prevent the loss of her rings. At a keyboard on the stage, she explored her soprano’s clear upper register in “Ocean Eyes.” An epic “L’Amour De Ma Vie” ranged from French-tinged Euro pop to a disco beat.

If nothing else had, the title track from her “Happier Than Ever” album affirmed that Eilish’s music is as big as the venues she’s playing it in. A raw repudiation of an ex in the spirit of Alanis Morisette’s “You Oughta Know,” “Happier Than Ever” is divided into two emotional and sonic halves: acoustic self-reflection followed by raging release. The live presentation of the song’s latter half involved Eilish on her knees tearing at an electric guitar to pyro blasts and a huge drum fill.

Following that catharsis, she pivoted to camaraderie with “Birds of a Feather.” A breezy slice of Janet Jackson-esque pop, it speaks of an enduring love, the nature of which is not entirely clear. Is it romantic love? A deep friendship? Or, as seemed to be the case the during the arena-wide singalong on opening night in New Orleans, a bond between a pop star and her fans? A blizzard of celebratory confetti prefaced Eilish’s farewell and final dash through the crowd.

Two songs earlier, she sat on the edge of the stage, her legs dangling, for “What Was I Made For?,” her hit single from the 2023 “Barbie” movie soundtrack.

Voicing Barbie’s, and her own, self-doubts, she sang, “Takin’ a drive, I was an ideal/Looked so alive, turned out I’m not real/Just something you paid for/What was I made for?”

For Eilish, the whole of the night provided the answer.