Billie Eilish is perhaps the most talented artist of our generation…and I don’t throw that around lightly. At only 13, Eilish wrote “Ocean Eyes” alongside her brother Finneas and launched her prolific career. And at the fair age of 22, Eilish has 24 GRAMMY Award nominations and nine wins, two Oscars, two Golden Globes, and countless other accolades.
Beyond that, she recently announced her third album, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, to be released May 17, 2024. She spent the days leading up to the announcement building excitement by adding all of her Instagram followers to her “Close Friends” list. Eilish had the most Instagram followers in 48 hours…with her count increasing by 7 million followers total.
While her debut album, when we all fall asleep…where do we go?, was a chart-topper in its own right, it landed Billie every GRAMMY it was nominated for at the ripe age of 18…Eilish has solidified herself as one of the most revered and sought-after popstars in the world.
Eilish recently caught media attention for quietly revealing her sexuality. In an interview with Variety, she states that she’s always liked girls…and assumed people always knew that. In a viral snippet from her new song, LUNCH, she details a love affair with a girl.
But people don’t only adore Billie for her catchy tracks that consistently top the charts. It’s not just her songwriting ability and unique vocals that keep us hooked. People love her because she’s unafraid to speak her mind.
Whether it be complaining about too many influencers being at an awards show, or calling out other artists for using unsustainable practices…Billie does not hold back.
Billie Eilish On Sustainability
Eilish home
rethinkingthefuture.com
The Eilish home is iconic for many reasons: it’s where Billie and Finneas recorded her debut album, countless other songs, and EPs, in an effort to conserve water there’s no grass, and the roof is covered in solar panels. And being environmentally conscious extends beyond the four walls of their home.
When the hottest young talent is discovered at such an early age like Eilish, record labels are chomping at the bit to sign them. It’s like when a D1 athlete is ready to commit to college…you have your pick.
But what Eilish and her mom, Maggie Baird, were looking for wasn’t about money or label-perks…they were seeking a solid sustainability program. And while that may seem like standard practice, most labels didn’t bring up environmental policies during these meetings at all.
After signing to The Darkroom via Interscope Records, the struggle didn’t stop there. Billie Eilish and her family have been consistent contributors to the fight against climate change.
Maggie Baird has since started Support + Feed, which focuses on the climate crisis and food insecurity. Support + Feed helped Eilish’s 2022 Happier Than Ever tour save 8.8 million gallons of water through plant-based meal service for the artist and crew members.
During Billie’s 2023 Lollapalooza performance, she aided the launch and funding of REVERB’s Music Decarbonization Project – which guaranteed all battery systems used during her set were solar powered. The MCD’s overall mission is to lower – and eventually eliminate –the music industry’s carbon emissions.
But more recently, Billie Eilish called out other artists for releasing multiple versions of vinyls in order to boost vinyl sales. In an interview with Billboard, she says,
“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…”
Artists convince fans to buy different versions of their albums by offering exclusive features on each vinyl. Take Taylor Swift, for example, who released five separate vinyl versions of Midnights, each with a different deluxe “Vault” track.
While Billie may not have been trying to shade one artist in particular, the point is that she’s fed up. After being the rare artist in the industry who go out of their way to remain environmentally conscious, Eilish sets the bar high.
How Eilish’s New Album Is Sustainable
Billie for "Hit Me Hard and Soft"
William Drumm
Social media users were quick to claim Eilish was hypocritical by announcing that HIT ME HARD AND SOFT will have eight vinyl variations. However, each vinyl is made from recycled materials – either 100% recycled black vinyl or BioVinyl, which replaces petroleum used during manufacturing with recycled cooking oil.
This just illustrates that Eilish wasn’t directing criticism towards other artists for using vinyl variants to gain album sales…but she does think there are better ways to do it that benefit the environment without hurting their sales.
Pandemic Profiteers - When Billionaires Got Richer, A Lot Richer
While you and me were counting our pennies, Bezos & Musk were raking it in
“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime” ... French novelist Honoré de Balzac
No one disputes the fact that the global pandemic threw us all under the bus. Some of us got sick. Some of us lost loved ones. Others lost jobs. Others reaped the benefits. At Inequality.org, journalist Chuck Collins recently shared some statistics concerning the ever-increasing disparity between billionaires and average folks. In a nutshell, the rich not only got richer – they got a lot richer.
Pandemic profiteers like Musk and Bezos made out like bandits and the figures are jaw-dropping. At the start of the pandemic, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was worth about $25 billion dollars; two years into the pandemic his wealth had surged to $255 billion. When last checked – March 18, 2024 – Musk is at $188.5 billion. That’s more than a seven-fold increase in four years.
At the same time, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ wealth has soared from $113 billion to 192.8 billion – even after donating tens of billions to charity and paying out tens of billions more in a divorce settlement with his now ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott.
Speaking of Ms. Scott, she’s the only billionaire on the 2020 top 15 wealthiest Americans list to see a decline in her wealth decline from a net worth of $36 billion in 2020 to $35.4 billion due to her generous giving to charity. At least someone has their values in check.
In 2022 the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics summed up one study of COVID’s impact on those of us who were just trying to keep our heads above the water line:
The pandemic disrupted lower-paid, service-sector employment
most, disadvantaging women and lower income groups at least
temporarily, and this may have scarring effects...Higher-paid
workers tend to gain more from continuing opportunities to
telework. Less-advantaged students suffered greater educational
setbacks from school closures. School and daycare closures
disrupted the work of many parents, particularly mothers. We
conclude that the pandemic is likely to widen income inequality
over the long run, because the lasting changes in work patterns,
consumer demand, and production will benefit higher income
groups and erode opportunities for some less advantaged groups.
The U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics got it right. Income inequality grew like cancer cells in the course of the pandemic. Collins’ data tells us that in March 2020 the U. S. harbored 614 billionaires worth $2.947 trillion. In March 2024 the number of billionaires had grown to 737 billionaires worth $5.529 trillion.
If not always illegal, this vast increase in billionaires' wealth has deadly consequences.
In 2022 Oxfam International published Inequality Kills, a report detailing how inequality “is contributing to the death of at least 21,000 people each day, or one person every four seconds. This is a conservative finding based on deaths globally from lack of access to healthcare, gender-based violence, hunger, and climate breakdown.”
Oxfam’s International Executive Director Gabriela Bucher made it quite clear just what led to that perilous state of affairs:
Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets
to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the
pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom. Vaccines
were meant to end this pandemic, yet rich governments allowed
pharma billionaires and monopolies to cut off the supply to
billions of people. The result is that every kind of inequality
imaginable risks rising. The predictability of it is sickening.
Fixing – or at least ameliorating – inequality is no easy task. The recommendations of the Peterson Institute for International Economics include: governments need to address inequality directly and specifically; taxes and spending programs must be progressive and benefit others than the wealthy; novel approaches must replace tired, by-the-book policy.
Whatever remedies one favors to deal with the obscene inequality of wealth here and elsewhere, the time to act is now. As Oxfam’s Bucher says: “The consequences of it kill.”