Billie Eilish casually commands an arena as 'Hit Me Hard and Soft' tour plays Detroit

There was a moment midway through Monday night’s concert at Little Caesars Arena that summed up the Billie Eilish story.

Strumming her way through the close-quartered intimacy of “TV,” Eilish was quietly locking back into her bedroom-pop origins — as bit by bit, it swelled into a full and forceful sing-along from fans in the packed arena.

That knack for inducing frenzied, supersized communion from understated, personal music has been Eilish’s calling card since her emergence as a teen artist eight years ago, and it was vividly on display Monday in Detroit, the fifth city on her tour in support of the spring album “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”

Performing in the round on a sleek stage that swept across the LCA floor, she started the 95-minute show under a frantic spray of lights and ended it with a massive splash of confetti.

In between were 25 songs, all of them hungrily soaked in by a rapt, sellout crowd that hung on Eilish’s every move and angsty lyric. (An official attendance number wasn’t released, but the audience appeared to number about 18,000, based on previous LCA concert configurations of similar size.)

Amid the glistening, high-end production, the show exuded a down-to-earth aura — a testament to the unconventional but hugely successful position the 22-year-old singer-songwriter has cultivated for herself in 2020s pop culture. When Eilish coughed and burped ahead of a gentle acoustic performance of “Male Fantasy,” the arena filled with empathetic giggles.

Reliably, her attire was as loose as her onstage demeanor: In an oversized, lightly bejeweled sweatshirt, a pair of baggy shorts and a camo-patterned cap thrust backward, Eilish gave the picture of insouciant cool as she scampered, crouched and pogoed her way across the vast stage, even taking occasions to sit and — at one point — lie flat on her back.

When she broke out in the late 2010s, Eilish's work was defined by whispery vocals layered atop textured beds of sound, and that approach was certainly a staple of Monday’s show, starting with the opening number, “Chihiro,” its bone-tingling bass subduing her breathy delivery.

But there were also rewarding glimpses of her full singing capacity, as she opened wide on new songs such as “Wildflower” and “The Greatest,” whose hazy-lit sheen unfolded into a full-on power ballad as Eilish rose above the stage on a cabled platform.

Alongside earlier hits such as the spare and burbling “Bad Guy,” selections from the new album — Eilish’s rawest work yet — soared high inside LCA, including a smoky “L’Amour De Ma Vie” with its thick, kaleidoscopic coda.

Songs from 2021’s “Happier Than Ever” did heavy lifting, too: The title track found Eilish stabbing at an electric guitar as young fans emphatically shouted the song’s scorned-lover lyrics, while “Oxytocin” was a laser-streaked rave whose energy carried over to a brief stint on a second stage at the end of the arena floor.

The achingly lovely “What Was I Made For,” Eilish’s massive “Barbie” hit ballad, was a late-show highlight, with muted drums adding a new live accent to the Oscar-winning song.

Eilish earlier took to a keyboard for a low-key run through several of her pre-fame songs, capped by “Ocean Eyes,” the viral SoundCloud single that kickstarted the whole thing in 2016.

This was Eilish’s fourth Motor City visit, though the first without musical accompaniment from her brother and chief collaborator, Finneas, who is occupied with his just-released solo album, “For Cryin’ Out Loud!” (Earlier Monday, he announced a Feb. 25 show at the Fillmore Detroit.)

But a four-piece band and pair of backing singers did their part Monday, stationed within pits inset into the stage and occasionally venturing out.

The sustained collective shriek that greeted Eilish’s entrance at LCA was the loudest we’ve heard at a Detroit concert in 2024, but it turns out that 18,000 super-devoted fans can also be willed into silence.

Sitting cross-legged on the stage 25 minutes in, Eilish cheerfully pleaded for quiet and promised there would be a payoff. As a loving hush fell over the arena, she began her construction of “When the Party’s Over,” the real standout track from her debut album: One by one, she hummed a piece of backing vocal, each recorded on the fly and looped into a rich stack of harmonies for her to sing atop.

And so there she was once again — back in her little home studio, quietly making music, primed for a wild reception from an adoring audience.

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Billie Eilish casually commands an arena as 'Hit Me Hard and Soft' tour plays Detroit