Singer-songwriter Billie Eilish on Monday issued a statement on Instagram apologising for using a racial slur in an old video that resurfaced on TikTok at the end of last week. In the video, she is seen lip-syncing a racist slur along with Tyler, the Creator’s 2011 song Fish.
The video also shows the singer apparently mocking Asian accents.
Taking to Instagram, the Grammy winner, who is now 19, explained that she was “13 or 14” in the video in question. “I mouthed a word from a song that, at the time, I didn’t know was a derogatory term used against members of the Asian community,” she wrote. “I am appalled and embarrassed and want to barf that I ever mouthed along to that word,” she added.
Adding that the only time she ever heard that word was in the song, Eilish wrote, “Regardless of my ignorance and age at the time, nothing excuses the fact that it was hurtful.”
The Bad Guy singer also addressed what appears to be her mocking Asian accents in the video, saying that the way she was speaking was a “gibberish” voice she has used since she was a child.
“It is absolute gibberish and just me goofing around and is in NO way an imitation of anyone or any language, accent, or culture in the SLIGHTEST,” Eilish wrote. “Anyone who knows me has seen me goofing around with voices my whole life. Regardless of how it was interpreted, I did not mean for any of my actions to have caused hurt to others and it absolutely breaks my heart that it is being labelled now in a way that might cause pain to people hearing it,” she further added.
At the end of her statement, Eilish, whose second album Happier Than Ever will be out on July 30 on Darkroom/Interscope, requested her followers to “continue having conversations, listening and learning,” and said that she only wants to use her platform “to fight for inclusion, kindness, tolerance, equity, and equality.”
