Billie Eilish isn’t putting up with false rumors. The 22-year-old Oscar winner released a statement over the weekend reacting to the speculation that she slammed Taylor Swift in her recent interview about “wasteful” music artists.
“OK, so it would be so awesome if people would stop putting words into my mouth and actually read what I said in that billboard article,” she wrote via her Instagram Stories. “These are industry-wide systemic issues. When it comes to variants, so many artists release them, including ME!, which I clearly state in the article. The climate crisis is now and it’s about all of us being part of the problem and trying to do better sheesh.”
Billie’s interview about the music industry got Swifties buzzing last week. In it, she emphasized how “wasteful” it is for “some artists” to release vinyl records. Though she didn’t mention any celebrity by name, some fans believed that Billie was referring to the 34-year-old Eras Tour pop star announced multiple editions of her upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department.
“We live in this day and age where, for some reason, it’s very important to some artists to make all sorts of different vinyl and packaging … which ups the sales and ups the numbers and gets them more money and gets them more …” Billie told Billboard on Thursday, March 28. “It’s so wasteful, and it’s irritating to me that we’re still at a point where you care that much about your numbers and you care that much about making money — and it’s all your favorite artists doing that s**t.”
The “What Was I Made For?” hitmaker further stressed that she “can’t even expressed” how “wasteful it is” for top artists in the business to release several vinyl editions.
“It is right in front of our faces, and people are just getting away with it left and right, and I find it really frustrating as somebody who really goes out of my way to be sustainable and do the best that I can and try to involve everybody in my team in being sustainable,” Billie said, adding, “And then it’s some of the biggest artists in the world making f**king 40 different vinyl packages that have a different unique thing just to get you to keep buying more.”
Billie then recalled watching The Hunger Games recently, which led her to think about this problem, “because it’s like, we’re all going to do it because [it’s] the only way to play the game. It’s just accentuating this already kind of messed up way of this industry working.”
Earlier this year, Taylor announced the news of her upcoming album at the Grammys. During her worldwide tour, the “Love Story” artist announced several new editions of the album: “The Bolter” and “Black Dog.”
As for Billie, she released her 2021 album, Happier Than Ever, in vinyl, but the multiple versions were sold with recycled black vinyl and were wrapped in sugar cane-made shrink wrap. The colored editions of her album were sold with other recycled materials.
