Earlier this year, Billie Eilish was forced to hit back after she was accused of shading Taylor Swift in comments about “wasteful” artists during an interview with Billboard.
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Speaking to the publication for a sustainability-centered interview, Billie criticized how normalized it has become for artists to sell multiple variants of the same album.
At this point, it’s important to point out that Billie herself sells multiple vinyl variants of her albums, but they all have the exact same tracklist so that fans aren’t forced to buy every version in order to hear all of her songs. She also uses 100% recycled vinyl and scraps for each variant.
“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 explained in the interview.
“I can’t even express how wasteful it is. It is right in front of our faces, and people are just getting away with it left and right,” Billie went on. “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 fucking 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 shit,” she concluded.
Needless to say, it didn’t take long for people to draw direct parallels between Billie’s comments and Taylor, with the latter literally earning herself the nickname “Capitalist Queen” from her fans for the way that she utilizes this tactic.
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For context, Billie’s album variants only offer fans a different vinyl color and packaging, and all of the options are announced at the same time so that fans can choose between them and order their favorite.
Meanwhile, Taylor is renowned for the way that she releases multiple versions of the same album with different bonus tracks on each one.
Just last year, Taylor’s own fans accused her of a “shameless cash grab” when she released different colored vinyl variants for her 1989 rerelease — with each option announced one at a time and only available for a limited window.
Creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity around the blue edition, which dropped first, Taylor warned fans that it would only be available for 48 hours. Once those 48 hours were up, Taylor surprise-dropped a yellow version that was also only available for a matter of hours. The same pattern repeated for other colors.
Each vinyl was listed on Taylor’s official store for $31.89, and each also incurred its own shipping charge as orders for multiple versions could not be placed at the same time
And this was far from the first time that Taylor had been called out for promoting overconsumption within her fanbase. She has previously been criticized for encouraging fans to buy her excessive limited edition merch drops, and her 2022 album Midnights also proved controversial.
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When the album was first announced, Taylor excitedly took to social media to show her followers that if they bought four versions of Midnights on vinyl, the backs of the jackets would create a clock.
Target also had an exclusive CD version of the album that included three bonus tracks that weren’t available elsewhere. This meant that if fans wanted to hear the songs, they had to buy a physical version.
Then, six months after the album’s release, Taylor released a CD-exclusive Late Night edition of Midnights that contained more exclusive bonus tracks that weren’t available on streaming sites — forcing fans to buy a second physical version in order to hear all of the tracks.
