Billie Eilish Attacks Taylor Swift-Style Vinyl Variants

Billie Eilish has come out swinging at artists that release multiple vinyl variants. In an interview with Billboard, the US singer slammed artists like Taylor Swift who create multiple packages to increase sales.

“It is right in front of our faces, and people are just getting away with it left and right,” she said. “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. 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 favourite artists doing that shit.”

Eilish’s most recent album, Happier Than Ever, was released with eight different colour variants, although they were recycled and in keeping with her push for sustainability. You could have chosen an ‘opaque sienna’ exclusive to Urban Outfitters, pale yellow exclusive to Walmart, light blue exclusive to Target, sage green for Amazon, brown exclusive to indie record stores and more.

“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,” Eilish continued. “It’s just accentuating this already kind of messed-up way of this industry working.”

Each album purchased counts to the chart for the artist, so five albums from one fanares as good as one album each from five fans, making the conversion for record companies very good business, helping both their bottom line and their chart position.

Taylor Swift is the queen of vinyl variants, with timed releases in the lead-up to each album release. Many of these variants become available again after the allocated presale period. Her albums also include exclusive tracks on each variant, pushing super fans to collect all of the versions.

Last year, The Music examined just how exclusive Swift’s ‘exclusive’ variants of her albums actually are. Her album The Tortured Poets Department is released on April 19 and has already had four ‘exclusive’ variants revealed with exclusive cover art - The Manuscript, The Bolter, The Black Dog and The Albatross (named after the exclusive track on each). The album is also available in a standard edition as well as on cassette and CD.

Billie Eilish’s third album was confirmed earlier this year as being finished but has yet to be released for pre-order. In the meantime, The Music will continue to listen to What Was I Made For on repeat.