Billie Eilish is music’s quiet revolutionary – on stage, even Foo Fighters were outshone

For the past three years, iHeartRadio, the largest audio broadcaster in America, has brought radio-friendly alternative rock to Los Angeles, and the 17,500-capacity arena The Forum, to celebrate all things guitar-driven. But instead of seven bands taking to the stage, this year’s ALTer EGO event saw only Billie Eilish and Foo Fighters performing to an empty arena. The rest of the 90-minute show, broadcast online, was given over to archive footage from previous years, including Muse fist-pumping their way though Uprising and Coldplay’s orchestral rendition of Viva La Vida.

Today, Foo Fighters are the biggest rock band going, though you wouldn’t know it from watching the six-piece on Thursday night. Dressed like roadies and with the production budget of an academy show, the group let their stadium-ready rock ’n’ roll do the talking. Their polished opener, Everlong, and their snarling closer, The Pretender, saw the band confident enough to go off-script with Led Zeppelin-inspired breakdowns.

They were joined by three backing singers – one of which was Dave Grohl’s daughter Violet – for two tracks from their imminent 10th album, Medicine at Midnight. The slinking Shame Shame was a rich, cinematic affair, while the anxious Cold War campfire singalong of Waiting on a War saw Foo Fighters briefly try their hand at restraint, before they turned everything back up to 11 for the explosive final moments.

Post-show, a socially-distanced band reflected on touring with Weezer (Grohl ordered the latter a group of male strippers as an end-of-tour prank), and called Beck “a space alien – he can transform from one artist to another”, as they introduced classic performances from both.

Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas also played host, discussing how Cage the Elephant’s breakout hit, Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked, was one of the first songs that taught Billie how storytelling in music could work. And, she admitted, “there were a lot of times where I would sit in a car and cry to Mr Brightside, even though nothing in my life was like that. The Killers make music that makes you feel heard.”

And yet, following an hour of alternative rock bands playing radio-friendly hits to a sold-out arena, Eilish’s short set was a potent reminder of just how revolutionary her music is. Despite her distinctly anti-pop anthems, Eilish quickly became the biggest pop star going with the release of her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? in 2019. At this gig, her three-song set was a live collection of what came next (minus one award-winning Bond theme) for the rock star’s pop star.

The brooding Therefore I Am, an attitude-driven floor-filler that pushes back against every expectation left at Eilish’s feet, saw the singer strut about the barren stage, before the reflective Everything I Wanted summoned an air of power from Finneas’s haunting instrumentals.The aching My Future might be the closest Eilish has come to making a straight-up pop song, and here her soaring vocals set her apart from the likes of Adele, Amy and Ariana. No gimmicks, no genre-splicing; the track delivered raw emotion before it flourished into an epic of self-love.

All three tracks deal with a confusing life in the brightest of spotlights, but there wasn’t a hint of fear in the 19-year-old’s performance. Instead, Eilish spent her set dancing about the stage with a carefree joy, a world away from the moody teenager she’s often dismissed as. What could be more rock ’n’ roll?