Billie Eilish Clarifies Calling Taylor Swift Wasteful.

On March 28, Billie, 22, spoke with Billboard about sustainability and lambasted artists that sell several vinyl variants of the same album. Billie, who grew up in an environmentally concerned household, has always promoted sustainability. She has cooperated with climate change organizations, assisting in the elimination of carbon emissions generated by the music business, as well as with designer companies to offer vegan alternatives to some of their most recognized designs.

In an interview with Billboard, Billie was questioned about her current attempts to make vinyl more sustainable. The reporter mentioned that her most recent studio album, Happier Than Ever (2021), was available in eight different vinyl editions produced from 100% recycled vinyl scraps.

Billie said, “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.” The interviewer interjected and said, “Well, it counts toward No. 1 albums.” Billie replied, “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.”

“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,” she said.

“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 added.

Billie didn’t mention anyone in the interview. However, numerous social media users quickly guessed that she was referring to Taylor Swift, who has been heavily chastised for selling several vinyl versions of her albums.

Taylor, for example, was chastised in August for releasing numerous vinyl editions of her 1989 album reissue, each of which contained the same song but came in different colors and featured a different photograph of the artist on the cover. The vinyls cost $31.89 each through Taylor’s own store, and each had its own shipping cost.

A year ago, Taylor encouraged fans to buy multiple vinyl versions of her album Midnights, explaining that the back of all four covers would form a clock. She also issued multiple copies of the album, each with a different additional track.

However, Billie has now joined the discourse to emphasize that she “wasn’t singling anyone out” in her Billboard interview. Billie took to Instagram this week and posted a comment to her story that said: “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.”

“i wasn’t singling anyone out, these are industry-wide systemic issues,” she went on. “& 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 its about all of us being part of the problem and trying to do better.”