Earlier this month, Billie Eilish found herself at the center of a head-scratching controversy: Following an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! during which she revealed she did not know what the band Van Halen was, she was criticized online, for her lack of knowledge about music that’s from well before her time. On the show, after a series of questions that was meant to highlight the age difference between Eilish (17) and Kimmel (52), Eilish said, “You’re making me look so dumb.” To that, Kimmel responded, “It’s not a matter of being dumb. If you asked me questions about 1943, I probably wouldn’t know the answers either.”
Still, it seems Eilish felt like the game was designed to make her look stupid, and she hinted at this while accepting an award this weekend. Variety named Eilish their Hitmaker Of The Year, and during the awards ceremony, Eilish accepted the honor. While doing so, she threw shade at Kimmel, saying, “Thank you so much, Variety. Thank you for not making me look stupid, like everybody else wants to do on TV. Love that.”
Elsewhere during her acceptance speech, Eilish shared kind words about her brother and creative collaborator Finneas, saying, “A big thank you to my big brother Finneas. Finneas is my best friend, my big brother, he’s four years older than me and we’ve been best friends kinda forever. We started making music together when I was 13 and he was 17. He produces everything. He’s the only reason I’m anywhere in the whole world and he’s probably the only reason I’m alive.”
Finneas then took a second to respond, saying, “I would just like to thank Billie for being naive in her trust of a 17-year-old who had no idea what he was doing, who was incredibly ambitious, and thought every idea I had was the best idea, and I couldn’t be more proud of every song that I’ve made with you. There’s a lot of bullsh*t articles about me now, about how I’m not ‘just’ Billie Eilish’s brother, and just being Billie Eilish’s brother is all I ever want to be. I love Billie more than anything else, and I’m so grateful to you, and I love you.”
Watch Eilish’s full acceptance speech above.
