Billie Eilish Clarified Comments After Taylor Swift Fans Got Upset

Billie Eilish wants to steer clear of the drama — especially when that drama is imaginary. On March 31, the “What Was I Made For” singer took to her Instagram stories after Taylor Swift fans accused her of throwing shade in a recent interview.

Eilish put a stop to the assumptions on IG. “Okay 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 on her stories. “I wasn’t singling anyone out, 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,” she continued. “The climate crisis is now and it’s about all of us being part of the problem and trying to do better sheesh.” (“ME!” is a Swift song, which some fans pegged as an additional dig.)

ICYMI, here’s what went down: In a March 28 Billboard interview, Eilish lamented the lack of sustainable practices in the music industry, specifically noting artists creating “all sort of different vinyl and packaging,” which she labeled as “wasteful.” Swifties saw the quote as a dig at the Eras Tour singer since Swift has been consistently announcing different vinyl variants of her upcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department.

Plenty of X users thought Eilish was shading Swift specifically. “Clocked Taylor swift bad,” one fan wrote. Others were quick to point out Eilish’s own history, whether she was selling different vinyl variants or splatter-painted versions of her album.

In the actual article, which Eilish linked on her IG stories, she made it clear that she wasn’t talking about a single artist. “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,” she said in the piece.

Eilish continued:

I can’t even express to you how wasteful it is. 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 — and then it’s some of the biggest artists in the world making f*cking 40 different vinyl packages that have a different unique thing just to get you to keep buying more. 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 sh*t.

But, as the interviewer pointed out, it’s a “systemic” problem — not one artist’s fault. “I was watching The Hunger Games and it made me think about it, because it’s like, we’re all going to do it because [it’s] the only way to play the game,” Eilish added. “It’s just accentuating this already kind of messed up way of this industry working.”