Fans accuse Taylor Swift of being 'nasty' to much younger artist Billie Eilish

Fans of Billie Eilish have accused Taylor Swift of 'nasty' behavior following Swift's recent announcement about her Tortured Poets Department album.

Swift surprised the world on April 19 by dropping her 11th studio album, featuring an impressive 31 tracks that she has since integrated into her ongoing Eras Tour. The album broke records, rapidly climbing the charts. Swift expressed gratitude to her fans for their support. However, one month later, some music fans have accused her of acting in bad faith.

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These accusations arose as Eilish released her new album, Hit Me Hard And Soft, today (May 17), her first release since the 2021 album Happier Than Ever. Eilish has been promoting the release on social media, expressing that she “could not be more proud of this album.” Yet, some fans believe the release has been overshadowed by an announcement Swift made this week.

The 'Shake It Off' singer unveiled three new digital editions of The Tortured Poets Department, which included first draft phone memos of her songs ‘The Black Dog,’ ‘Cassandra,’ and ‘Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?’. The timing of this release has caused a stir, as the new versions arrived on the same day as Hit Me Hard And Soft.

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Eilish's fans took to social media, particularly X, to criticize Swift.

"Doing this on her album release day is so nasty," one Eilish fan wrote.

Another commented: "I loved Taylor Swift, but this is not done. So bad of her for trying to block young artists like Billie Eilish." However, some music fans defended Swift, arguing that the release of the new versions had actually brought more attention to Eilish's album.

"i think it’s very unnecessary to turn these 2 women simply promoting their freshly new albums into an imaginary beef," one person wrote.

"Like look at me in the eyes and swear to me that u think that taylor hates billie and it’s promoting her album for the sake of ruining billie’s career…"

The conflict over the albums comes after Eilish spoke to Billboard about different types of albums, saying: “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." 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***ing 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 s***.”

After Eilish made her comments, some speculated she may have been talking about Swift specifically, but Eilish has denied those claims.

Credit: Billie Eilish / Instagram

In a story on Instagram, she clarified: "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.

“The climate crisis is now and it’s about all of us being part of the problem and trying to do better sheesh.”

Featured image credit: Kevin Mazur/TAS24 / Getty