Billie Eilish at TD Garden in Boston

A few songs into her set at TD Garden on Friday night, pop fantasy Billie Eilish asked the rapt crowd a surprising favor: She wanted the room to be silent for a minute or so.

The singer-songwriter, whose rapid rise from her brother’s home studio to the stage has been one of pop’s brightest stories of recent years, was preparing to perform her minimalist 2018 single “When the Party’s Over.” Its backing track is largely comprised of Eilish’s vocals, which on the record are overdubbed to resemble a ghostly choir; the Los Angeles native wanted to replicate this effect live, but needed the crowd to remain silent for the effect to fully work.

“This is the only time in my life that I will ask you for silence,” she said, “because I love noise more than anything else in this world.”

The audience complied, allowing her mournful, wordless singing and the breaths she took between each phrase to fill the arena, layer by layer. After a few loops, Eilish seemed pleased with her work, her smile doubling as a signal for those in attendance to turn up the volume, but not so much that it distracted from the fragile, wounded beauty of the song in question.

These kinds of dichotomies — between jangly basslines and hushed vocals, musical beauty and lyrical ugliness, carefree dancing and existential contemplation, audiences of thousands and crowds of two — have fueled Eilish’s music from the beginning. She and her brother and collaborator Finneas O’Connell have a deep creative relationship and a collective vision that has resulted in singular tracks, many of which have eventually turned into box office hits.

Their first pop hit, “bad guy,” which appeared on their 2019 debut “WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?”, is equal parts menacing and fun, its booming bassline and horror-movie synths making his whisper even more cutting. threatening. “What Was I Made For?”, her crystalline, Oscar-winning contribution to 2023’s “Barbie” album, addresses femininity represented in both plasticine and flesh, with the song’s identifiable restlessness derived from both its basic production and its lack of resolution. And her verse on the rework of Charli (On Friday, Eilish turned it into the base for a boisterous dance party, where the arena was bathed in lights in a shade that could only be called “’Brat’ green.”) Despite their varied styles and approaches, some of which required pyrotechnics to heat up the arena, each track on Friday filled and thrilled the garden during Eilish’s catchy, fast-paced set.

Eilish’s latest album, “HIT ME HARD AND SOFT”, as the title might suggest, delves even deeper into the contradictions. Scathing critiques of modern culture, like the sweeping opening track “SKINNY,” clash against the rising storm of “THE GREATEST,” which on Friday felt like an emotional climax.

The album also had its own left-field success. Although the upbeat and flirty “LUNCH” was selected as the album’s first single, upon the album’s release, listeners flocked to “BIRDS OF A FEATHER,” a love song with insistent synths, passionate lyrics that could be delivered from the altar or the brink, and a courageous vocal performance from Eilish that combines the vulnerability of her upper register with a newfound power that highlights the big feelings roiling beneath her brilliance. The cut ended Friday night’s set, its final push serving as a last chance for Eilish and her faithful to experience total catharsis — and both parties did so with gusto, the shared gratitude of audience and artist fueling each other. from each other as confetti floated. of the beams.

Billie Eilish

With Nat and Alex Wolff

At TD Garden, Friday, October 11