Taylor Swift Sparks Backlash With Surprise ‘TTPD’ Drop on Same Day as Billie Eilish’s New Album

Taylor Swift has sparked backlash from fans of Billie Eilish by surprise dropping three new digital versions of her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, on the same day as the younger singer’s third studio album release.

The “Cruel Summer” singer, 34, announced on Thursday, May 16, that she would be releasing three new variants of the standard digital version of TTPD, each featuring a “first draft phone memo” of a song from the album, which was originally released on April 19. The three voice memo songs are “The Black Dog,” “Cassandra” and “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” Fans must purchase all three album variants in order to collect the three voice memos.

Taylor set the release day as Friday, May 17 — the same day that Billie, 22, released her highly anticipated album Hit Me Hard and Soft. Many fans of the “What Was I Made For?” singer were outraged at the older pop star for seemingly attempting to overshadow the new album release.

“The same day as Billie’s release … and y’all swear that Taylor is a girl’s girl,” one X user wrote in response to the news of Taylor’s TTPD drop.

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“I loved Taylor Swift but this is not done. So bad of her for trying to block young artists like Billie Eilish,” another person tweeted.

“How convenient she's doing this on the day another big artist is releasing her new album,” a third fan commented.

Some users speculated that Taylor’s move was a response to Billie seemingly throwing shade at her earlier this year when she called out the wastefulness of releasing several vinyl album variants — something the “Lover” singer has done for years.

“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,” one person tweeted.

In a March 28 interview with Billboard, Billie spoke out against the practice of releasing multiple vinyl album variants because of the effects it has on the environment.

“I can’t even express to you how wasteful it is,” she said. “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.”

Though Billie did not mention Taylor by name, she noted that “all your favorite artists” are doing it, and many fans of the “Cassandra” singer took it as a dig at her. However, Billie cleared things up via her Instagram Stories on March 31.

“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,” she wrote. “I wasn’t singling anyone out, these are industry-wide systemic issues. And 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.”