LIVE: Billie Eilish — HIT ME HARD AND SOFT: THE TOUR

By Nick Campos | NJC Creative

The Experience

Unbelievably beautiful.

What the show lacked in choreography and elaborate stage production, Billie made up for vocally. She has an incredible ability to take her music beyond the recording and make you feel the emotion behind every word.

In every strain, every cry, and every change in her voice, you can hear the emotions and memories lingering within each line. At some point, it stops being just about the music and becomes about the story and what that story means to each person in the room.

Once music is released, it no longer belongs solely to the artist. We attach our own memories, people, heartbreaks, and experiences to it. Hearing thousands of people sing the same words while each person carries an entirely different meaning behind them is what made this show so special.

Billie didn’t need to overwhelm the performance with choreography or spectacle. Her voice and writing carried enough weight on their own.

Sometimes hearing one lyric you’ve known for years sung right in front of you can do more than any amount of production ever could.

From My Experience

I had VIP pit and was near barricade, and I cried through most of the show.

The crowd was amazing and incredibly kind, but hearing Billie’s catalog live felt weird.

I grew up with her music. I remember finding one of her songs on Musical.ly when I was younger and simply vibing to it. Back then, I wasn’t thinking about what her music would eventually mean to me. I hadn’t lived through the experiences necessary to understand some of the emotions she was writing about.

Now I have.

And sometimes her music makes me uncomfortable.

Not in a bad way. It makes me uncomfortable because it calls my character into question. It forces me to confront feelings and behaviors I don’t necessarily like admitting I have.

Male Fantasy and TV feel like two sides of the same coin to me.

Male Fantasy is what happens when the pain turns inward.

Listening to it makes me feel sick. Not literally, but emotionally. When I found myself heartbroken, I didn’t always deal with it in healthy ways. I would look at my body for an explanation. I would stop eating, lock myself away, sexualize myself, and project an image of myself that I look back on now with embarrassment.

I was searching for an answer in myself.

Was I not attractive enough? Was my body the problem? Was I not what they wanted? What could I change so this wouldn’t happen again?

And eventually, it brings me back to the question within the title itself.

What is the male fantasy?

Am I good enough for it?

Will I ever be?

Heartbreak isn’t only about losing someone. There’s also the uncomfortable process of letting go of the idea of that person. You have to figure out what your life looks like when someone who occupied so much of your mind suddenly isn’t supposed to be there anymore. You have to learn how to exist without them.

TV sits on the other side of that same coin. While Male Fantasy makes me think about what happens when heartbreak causes you to turn against yourself, TV makes me think about what happens when you start abandoning yourself before it’s even over.

I don’t think TV is a song you casually listen to. I genuinely can’t remember a time I’ve listened to it without crying. To me, TV isn’t really about heartbreak. It’s about accepting the mess you’re in for the sake of someone else’s approval.

You know you’re neglecting other parts of your life. You watch friendships change. You isolate yourself. You allow one person’s attention to become more important than the relationships and parts of yourself you’re sacrificing to receive it.

And eventually, the blame turns inward there too.

You start wondering whether you’re the reason none of it works.

Maybe if I were different, they’d love me differently.

Maybe if I needed less, they’d give me more.

Maybe if I changed, they’d finally choose me.

Maybe I’m the problem.

That’s what connects TV and Male Fantasy for me. They’re different experiences, but they arrive at the same frightening place: looking at yourself as something that needs to be fixed in order to be loved.

Then there are songs like WILDFLOWER and THE GREATEST.

Those hurt differently.

WILDFLOWER makes me think about comparison. About trying to build something genuine with someone while somebody else’s shadow taints it. There’s a messiness that comes with loving someone who has loved people before you. Those relationships can linger into yours, even when those people aren’t physically there anymore. Sometimes it feels like the thought of them can still linger in your partner’s eyes.

You wonder what they looked like. What they had that you don’t. Why it didn’t work. What your person saw in them and how whatever they saw compares to what they see in you. Eventually, you’re not even competing with the other person anymore.

You’re competing with the version of them you’ve created in your own head.

And how exactly are you supposed to tell your partner that?

How do you explain that you’re jealous of a memory? That you’re comparing yourself to someone who isn’t even there? How can they reassure you about something that sometimes exists entirely within your own mind? That’s what makes comparison so destructive. Eventually, it doesn’t even require another person to participate.

THE GREATEST hurts in another way.

It makes me think about giving someone your all and slowly realizing that no amount of effort can force another person to recognize your worth for what it is. You can be patient. You can give everything you have. You can understand, forgive, and wait. You can love someone as loudly as you possibly know how. And they still might not love you in the way you need them to. They can lack reassurance, affection, or commitment, and you still wait for them. You keep giving. Whatever challenges the relationship puts you through, you convince yourself that surviving them is proof of how deeply you love this person.

But eventually, I have to question what being “the greatest” even means.

Being the greatest isn’t necessarily something to be proud of. Maybe it means you’re strong.

But strong for what?

Strong for yourself? Strong enough to love someone through difficulty? Or strong enough to tolerate less than you deserve?

At what point does patience become settling?

At what point does understanding become making excuses?

At what point does compromise become hiding your own feelings and needs because you’re terrified that expressing them will make your significant other leave?

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from constantly trying to prove something is worth saving, especially when you feel like you’re the only person working to save it.

That’s where these songs meet for me.

Male Fantasy asks what I need to change about myself.

TV asks how much of myself I’m willing to abandon for a connection.

WILDFLOWER asks if I’ll ever stop comparing myself.

And THE GREATEST asks how long I can keep giving before I lose myself in you.

They’re all different questions.

But somehow, they all leave me asking the same thing:

Why does being loved sometimes make me feel like I have to become less of myself?

Why do I have to sacrifice myself?

Why do I have to lose myself?

Is any of it actually worth it?

Or am I just lonely?

That’s why hearing these songs live hurt differently.

I wasn’t listening to the same music I discovered when I was younger anymore. The recordings were the same, but I had lived enough life to finally understand some of them.

Billie’s music doesn’t always give me an answer to these questions. I don’t think I want it to.

It makes me think.

It makes me uncomfortable.

It makes me confront the people who have hurt me, but more importantly, it makes me confront the ways I’ve hurt myself trying to be loved by them.

I grew up with Billie’s music.

Somewhere along the way, I grew into it too.