Do I smell a Billie Eilish-Taylor Swift rivalry brewing?
Eilish didn’t come straight out and say she was talking about Taylor Swift, though she basically said everything except for Swift’s name in a recent interview with Billboard. The main topic of the discussion was environmental sustainability in the music industry, and what artists can do to cut down on their carbon emissions.
You can say what you want about Billie Eilish and her music, but she’s at least leading a movement in the music world to make performing and selling merchandise more sustainable. Since 2019, she’s partnered with REVERB, a non-profit organization, to be her tour sustainability partner. REVERB’s efforts can cut down on water and electric usage during performances, and also pride themselves in using recycled materials for merchandise like t-shirts and physical music.
Eilish talked about her passion for sustainable practices as a musician in the interview, though she couldn’t help but feel like a lot of others weren’t as dedicated to the cause:
“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.”
May I say again that she didn’t address one specific artist. However, that description does ring a few bells in the music industry, with one major match being Taylor Swift. The former country star has become famous for re-recording her music (to regain the rights to her older music), and every time she’s released a “Taylor’s version” of an older album, various styles of vinyls have come with each release.
And while we’re at it, Beyonce’s recent Cowboy Carter album drop featured a myriad of different physical buying options, including four different colors of vinyls for fans to choose from. Spoiler alert, they probably bought every color that came out.
Of course, Garth Brooks is another who is know to release the same albums over and over and over as part of massive box sets. In fact, anytime he releases new music, you have to buy a bunch of old albums (and go to Bass Pro Shops) just to get your hands on it.
Eilish herself has released different vinyls throughout her career too, though she’s made sure that the vinyls and the packaging for the records are made out of sustainable material. So when she sees other artists flippantly releasing and re-releasing all kinds of different physical media, it can upset her, as she went on to say in the interview:
“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 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.
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. It’s just accentuating this already kind of messed up way of this industry working.”
Some strong words from Eilish there. She didn’t call out Swift or Beyonce directly, but something tells me that the rapid fanbases known as the “Swifties” and the “BeyHive” are going to go ahead and assume that she was talking about their favorite artists.
And while Eilish says everyone does it… shouldn’t she make a better effort to be the change she wants to see in the industry? She argues that she uses sustainable materials, but just look at the all the vinyl colors she offers. If you’re serious about sustainability, so much so that you’re giving long lectures in interviews about it, you don’t need that many colors. Recycled materials or not, your fans don’t need your album in six different colors.
I guess I’ll go ahead and get the popcorn ready? This should be fun to watch play out…
