Taylor Swift Accused of Undermining Billie Eilish’s Album Release: 'Gotta Go and Play These Stunts'

Following the release of her eleventh studio album on April 19, Taylor Swift captivated the world once again. Swift praised her fans for their support after TTPD's debut, which shattered records and dominated the charts. But a month later, several music fans have charged Swift of behaving dishonestly. The accusations were brought in connection with Billie Eilish's latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, which was released on May 17.

As reported by HuffPost, Swift released three additional digital copies of The Tortured Poets Department for her fans to purchase. An extra version of one of the three Swift songs—The Black Dog, Who's Afraid of Little Old Me? and Cassandra—are included in every copy. Regarding the release date, the updated versions came out the same day as Eilish's Hit Me Hard and Soft. Several fans quickly accused Swift of overtly trying to outperform Eilish's song in the charts. A fan commented on X, "I love you taylor, but this is just greedy. couldn’t have released this last week or next week? but now that you know there’s competition for #1 this week, you gotta go and play these stunts. it’s honestly tiring because you did this with sza too. just stop and let other people win pls."

Another user called Swift 'greedy' and added, "Love how billie said she’d wait till ariana released eternal sunshine to release her album & here’s taylor mass releasing to block billie...mind u she just released an album with 31 tracks...just greedy." One more user shared a similar sentiment on X, "I used to support how creative Taylor would get with her releases, but she's been milking it like crazy for too long and this is just ridiculous."

On the other hand, some Swifties jumped in support of the pop icon. One person added, "No is forcing yall to pre order or stream her music ! If yall don’t like her then don’t listen or pre order to it . Obviously the swifties are gonna pre order and stream because she’s doing it for her fans and also she said that she loves writing, making, releasing Music! Billie is gonna be number one anyway . Both of them are rich!"

Another noteworthy tweet stated, "Billie’s statement about artists releasing 40 vinyl packages to get people to buy more really got into her… doing this on her album release day is so nasty." Here, the fan brought up an interview Eilish had with Billboard on March 28, in which she discussed her disapproval of the practice of releasing many vinyl record variations due to its negative environmental impacts. She told the outlet, "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–king 40 different vinyl packages that have a different unique thing just to get you to keep buying more."

Eilish said that 'all your favorite artists' are doing it, but she did not specifically mention Swift. Still, many of Swift's fans saw this as a jab at her. On March 31, however, Eilish provided clarification via her Instagram Stories. As reported by LifeandStyle, she clarified, "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."