Billie Eilish’s Brother Finneas Sparks Outrage After Shady Posts About Taylor Swift’s New Album ‘The Life of a Showgirl’
By Erin Whitten
The internet is on fire yet again, and this time, the culprit is Finneas O’Connell. The Grammy-winning producer and brother to pop superstar Billie Eilish has come under fire for appearing to shade Taylor Swift and her brand-new album The Life of a Showgirl. The saga began with a single Instagram Story, but has since spiraled into a full-fledged pop culture wildfire. Fans are now convinced Finneas is fanning the flames on the long-rumored feud between the Eilish and Swift camps.
Finneas took to Instagram on October 4 to post a simple yet heavy message on his Instagram Stories “So many terrible songs on New Music Friday this week!! Shame on you! !”
You’d think an ambiguous post like this would have been ignored. But this isn’t the first time this has happened, and the internet was having none of it. Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl was the only big album dropping that day. The timing was hard to miss. Screenshots of the Story soon went viral on X and TikTok, as Swifties accused Finneas of directly attacking the singer’s latest project. Swift’s album had been doing huge numbers on Spotify, smashing streaming records and becoming 2025’s fastest-biggest debut to date.
It also turns out Finneas liked a TikTok calling Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl “spiritually Israeli.” The strange, charged phrase quickly went viral for all the wrong reasons. Critics called the comment offensive and out of left field, while others on Twitter accused Finneas of hypocrisy, citing his past statements on the pro-Palestinian cause. Screenshots of his “like” soon went viral across X and Instagram before he quietly unliked the post.
This isn’t the first time Billie’s world has found itself in hot water over perceived shots at Taylor Swift. Rumors of tension between the singers can be traced all the way back to early 2024. That year, Billie made headlines for calling out the music industry’s overproduction of certain album formats, like vinyl, for the purpose of artificially inflating album sales. While Swift was never mentioned directly by Billie, the practice is one that’s long been associated with Swift’s discography. The pop star also later said that she wasn’t speaking to anyone specifically, but again, the internet had spoken.
From there, it was easy to see tension between the singers everywhere you looked. Swift’s 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department spent the year at number one on the Billboard charts, while Billie’s Hit Me Hard and Soft dropped at number two in its debut. Billie was later seen calling three-hour concerts “literally psychotic,” with many taking this as a jab at Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour, known for its three-plus hour setlists. Swift has been notorious for using her music to respond to rivals in the past, so fans couldn’t help but read between the lines -especially as the two stars came into close contact at award shows and around music industry events. Billie quickly shut down the speculation, but that didn’t matter by then. The rumors had caught on like wildfire, and the Swift-Eilish feud became an obsession for the year’s internet.
Whether there’s truth to these rumors or if this is simply the internet’s favorite sport…slinging women against each other – is anyone’s guess. What we do know for sure is that this trend of rumors kicking off the second the internet cools down is one that we’ve seen time and time again. Trust me, we know Swift, she won’t need an Instagram Story to come with the clapback. She’ll do it in the music.
