Billie Eilish has clarified comments she made about the music industry and its wasteful practice of pressing multiple variants of vinyl to sell more copies of a release.
Speaking to Billboard last week, the recent Oscar-winning musician called out fellow artists for resorting to desperate attempts to boost their record sales, despite the well-documented negative impact the production of vinyl records has on the environment.
“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,” Eilish said. "I can’t even express to you how wasteful it is.”
“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,” she continued. “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 Billboard writer pointed out that Eilish herself is part of the problem, having released eight different variants of her 2021 album, Happier Than Ever. And while Eilish points out to sustainable practices in order to release her music physically (she opts for recycled materials for the vinyl and sugar cane for shrink wrap), many believe she is pointing a finger at her contemporaries, such as Taylor Swift, who has been accused of exploiting her fan base for selling numerous versions of her titles.
Now Eilish has explained that she wasn't targeting any particular artists in a post on Instagram, writing, “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,” she added. “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.”
You can read more about Eilish's attempts to directly eliminate carbon emissions created by the music industry. through her work with the Music Decarbonization Project here.