Billie Eilish has called out several billionaires to their faces and pledged to donate $11.5million (£8.7million) to charity.
The singer made the comments last night (Wednesday October 29) as she attended the ceremony for the 2025 Wall Street Journal 2025 Innovator Awards. Held at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the awards were held in recognition of industry leaders who are “changing the game” in their respective fields.
For this year’s edition, those celebrated included Spike Lee for Film, Ben Stiller for Entertainment, Hailey Bieber for Beauty, Priscilla Chan for Philanthropy in Science, and Mellody Hobson and George Lucas for Design.
Taking home the ‘Music Innovator Award’ on the night was Grammy and Oscar-winning artist Billie Eilish, who used her speech to call out billionaires for not doing more to help the less fortunate.
The ‘Birds Of A Feather’ singer – who has campaigned vigorously for animal rights and climate justice over the years – took to the stage to highlight how more “empathy” from the wealthiest members of society would make a noticeable difference.
“if you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?” -Billie at the @WSJ Innovator awards tonight in New York! pic.twitter.com/YjSoi4Ei0R
— Billie Eilish Society (@BillieSociety) October 30, 2025
“We’re in a time right now where the world is really really bad and really dark, and people need empathy and help more than ever, especially in our country”, she said. “If you have money it would be great to use it for good things and maybe give it to some people that need it.”
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She went on to call out to the billionaires who were in the room with her, among which were Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. “I love you all but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me… and if you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?” she questioned, before saying: “Give your money away, shorties”.
That night, it was announced by chat show host Stephen Colbert that the singer will be donating $11.5million (£8.7million) from her ‘Hit Me Hard And Soft Tour’ to charities for both food equity and the climate crisis.
Billie Eilish is making a $11,500,000 donation to organizations dedicated to food equity and the climate crisis!
pic.twitter.com/KpsfyakAKi— 🏁 (@concertleaks) October 30, 2025
That tour kicked off in September last year and came in support of Eilish’s third album ‘Hit Me Hard And Soft’. It has seen Eilish perform at huge venues globally across the past 12 months, and broken multiple attendance records worldwide along the way.
One of which was surpassing the 18-year record set by Justin Timberlake for number of visitors to Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena, and another included topping the benchmark set by Metallica at the O2 Arena in Prague (via InMusic).
The dates for the final leg of the ‘Hit Me Hard And Soft Tour’ will pick up again in November, with shows across Oklahoma, Louisana, Texas and more. Visit here for remaining tickets.
This isn’t the first time that Eilish has used her platform to push for change. Previously she joined forces with non-profit organisation Reverb to help make her live performances more sustainable. At venues including The O2 in London, the two of them established ‘Eco Villages’ to provide education for fans about reducing their carbon footprint.
The singer also implemented a vegan food policy at various tour stops in the trek – requiring vendors on site to only sell plant-based options during her time playing at the venue.
In other Billie Eilish news, the ‘Ocean Eyes’ hitmaker recently spoke to Wall Street Journal in a new feature, and revealed that she pushed back against including the hit track ‘Birds Of A Feather’ on her celebrated 2024 album because she thought it was “stupid”.
Since it was shared, the song has gone on to become one of Eilish’s biggest hits, and was crowned as Spotify’s most-streamed song of 2024, with over 1.77billion streams.
NME gave ‘Hit Me Hard And Soft’ a four star review which read: “Billie came into this process with aspirations to find herself, creatively and personally: ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ remains distinctly unique, a portrait of a singular talent entering young adulthood, exploring her queerness and experiencing the emotional thrill and (sometimes) catastrophe of chasing passion or falling in love.
“In trying to write an album for herself, she’s made one that will resonate harder than anything she’s done before.”
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