In the old days, which weren’t that long ago (in fact, they haven’t really gone away), there was that ritual moment when a rock ‘n’ roll idol, in the midst of delivering a classic anthem, would point the mic away from himself and into the arena, indicating that it was time for the audience to take over and sing the lines. It might be Springsteen doing “Thunder Road,” or Madonna doing “Holiday,” or the moment when I saw an entire Jersey stadium of Billy Joel fans singing “A bottle of white! A bottle of red…” The loving symbiosis of pop star and pop audience doesn’t get much more reverent than that.
Or does it? In the remarkable new concert film “Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour in Live 3D,” Billie Eilish’s fans sing right along with her, in a state of rapt intensity and devotion…for the entire concert. Great big swaths of the audience are singing every song, every lyric, with maximum commitment and a kind of avid purity, one that extends to impassioned hand gestures and — of course — an ongoing cascade of tears. It’s not just that they’re crying while they’re singing; it’s almost as if the two actions were fused into something called cry-singing.
In those golden olden days, pop idols were thought of in the most hallowed terms possible. In a word, they were gods. But in “Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft,” the feeling at hand — you can see it in the segment of fan interviews featured in the middle of the film — is that Billie Eilish is a goddess who is also a guru, an avatar, a life coach, a creator of safe spaces, and a reason for going on. She’s the one who will heal your pain. I’m not saying that the Beatles or Dylan or ABBA didn’t fill that same space, yet it somehow felt less psychodramatically all-consuming. Today you go to a Billie Eilish concert because you belong to the religion of Billie Eilish. (The same is true of Taylor Swift or Harry Styles or Olivia Rodrigo.) Every moment in the concert is an epiphany. Your ego and maybe your very existence depends on it.
