Billie Eilish’s HIT ME HARD AND SOFT or “HMHAS” album was announced on April 8 with songs like “LUNCH” being leaked getting fans excited hear the rest of the album which was released May 17. Not long after release the album blew up internationally with the highest first-week sales of her career, being nominated for a Grammy in six different categories for both the album and songs on the album, debuted at number two on the billboard 200, and was streamed 500 million times in its first week.
Before the album was released Eilish also announced her HIT ME HARD AND SOFT tour on April 29, starting on Sept. 29, 2024 in Quebec, Canada and ending July 27, 2025 in Dublin, Ireland. The concert openers varied depending on the date and destination with, The Marias, Nat & Alex Wolff, FINNEAS, Towa Bird, and Ashnikko. For the Seattle shows on Dec 5-6, The Marias opened for Eilish at 7:00 pm and performed for about forty-five minutes before exiting the stage, giving the crowd an intermission before Eilish came on stage at 8:39pm.
The show started with a box-like cage with glitching and flashing LED lights that started to lift into the air with eerie wave-like sounds playing. All the lights in the room then started to flicker and glitch faster, the sounds slowly turning into the instrumentals of “THE GREATEST” with the cage’s lights flickering off to reveal Eilish sitting inside on a platform, making the crowd go wild. The lights flicker back on as the cage lowers back down leaving Eilish standing on the platform now on top of the cage. Once completely lowered, the music and lights stop as a spotlight shine on her for a few seconds before starting her first song “CHIHIRO”. Eilish played all the songs from the album but also played some of her other biggest hits like “Therefore I Am” which included pyrotechnics along with amazing strobe lights that went on throughout most of the show.
At one point in the show Eilish sang her song “when the party’s over” by looping her voice a few times to harmonize, performing the song a cappella. This meant the crowd had to be very quiet for at least a minute so it didn’t mess up the song, some cities do well and others don’t. During the song “Guess” by Charli XCX featuring Eilish, she had moved to a separate stage where she would be launched up into the air at her part of the song which surprised and impressed all her fans watching. Along with all of her amazing upbeat songs that had people moving and jumping, she also has a lot of emotional songs like “TV”, which made a lot of the audience cry along with the songs “WILDFLOWER” and “SKINNY”.
At the end of her show she played her song “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” where confetti burst out from the stage, then the song slowly turned into the outro of the song “BLUE” as she took a bow on every side of the stage waving bye to everyone, she then made her way off the stage to high five and hug fans at the barricades before running backstage with the rest of her band behind her.
Overall I thought the show was very entertaining, emotional, and exciting. Eilish was very interactive with her fans and made sure that everyone had a good time, a lot of the people that went were very nice and were so fun to dance around with and scream the lyrics of our favorite songs together. I had the time of my life and this will forever be a core memory for me.