Senior Culture Reporter, HuffPost
Taylor Swift drew criticism online this week after unveiling three new editions of her album “The Tortured Poets Department” just one day before Billie Eilish released her latest record, “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”
The “Tortured Poets Department” variants were made available digitally Thursday evening. Each edition includes a bonus version of one of three Swift songs: “The Black Dog,” “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” and “Cassandra.”
Eilish, meanwhile, has been teasing the release of “Hit Me Hard and Soft” since April. Given the fervent anticipation for the nine-time Grammy winner’s latest, it didn’t take long for some fans to accuse Swift of making a transparent attempt to outpace “Hit Me Hard and Soft” on the charts.
One person on X, formerly Twitter, wrote: “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.”
Another X user suggested that Eilish’s recent criticism of excessive album variants “really got into” Swift, adding that “doing this on her album release day is so nasty.”
Others, however, came to Swift’s defense by suggesting it was simply indicative of the music business as a whole.
“This is a competitive industry, shes not playing any stunt she’s following the rollout,” one person wrote. “Still, even if it wasn’t why should Taylor move?”
“The Tortured Poets Department” has remained in the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart, which measures the 200 most popular albums in the country, since its April 19 release. The album sold more than 2.6 million copies in its first week.
Though the new “Tortured Poets Department” versions are currently only available digitally, the Eilish-versus-Swift discourse comes shortly after Eilish criticized musicians who have opted to issue multiple vinyl editions of their albums and singles in an effort to generate higher sales figures.
“I can’t even express to you how wasteful it is,” she told Billboard in March.
“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.”
Notably, Eilish didn’t identify any of the artists she may have been referring to in her comments. Still, many interpreted her remarks as a dig at Swift, whose Grammy-winning “Midnights” hit the shelves in 2022 with a handful of different vinyl editions.
After irking the fanbase of Swift and other artists, however, Eilish clarified on Instagram that she had only hoped to draw attention to “industry-wide systemic issues” in her Billboard interview.
She wrote: “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.”
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