After a video resurfaced last week showing Billie Eilish mouthing an anti-Asian remark, the Bad Guy singer has issued an apology for her past behaviour.
An edited compilation of several videos of the star was posted on TikTok last week that appears to show Eilish mouthing an Asian racial slur used in Tyler the Creator's 2011 song Fish. She is also imitating various accents, including what many believed to be her mocking an Asian accent.
In an apology uploaded to her Instagram Stories on Monday, Eilish said she was 13 or 14 when the video was filmed and that she had “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. I am appalled and embarrassed and want to barf that I ever mouthed along to that word".
She says the only time she'd ever heard that word was in the song, and it was never used by a member of her family or anyone else around her.
The Ocean Eyes singer also addressed the second part of the clip and says she was not mocking Asian accents but rather using a language she simply made up on her own and one she's used with pets, family and friends.
“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.”
Fans in China, where she has a particularly strong following, were upset and disappointed with the singer with some going as far as saying they would boycott her music going forward.
"Who doesn't know the C-word is a term that targets people of Chinese descent? And her mocking of Asian people's accent sounds very much like to me that she was mocking people speaking Cantonese," posted a netizen on Chinese blogging website Sina Weibo.
