Billie Eilish responds to Kanye's nonsensical demand for a Travis Scott apology

Last weekend Billie Eilish stopped an arena concert in Atlanta to help a distressed fan in the pit get an inhaler. “We’re taking care of our people, hold on,” she said to the packed stadium. “I wait for people to be O.K. until I keep going.” Video footage of the incident went viral, and many took her comments as a dig at Travis Scott — who has been at the center of controversy for his handling of the Astroworld Festival tragedy.

Now, the artist formerly known as Kanye has weighed in for some reason, adding a bit of unnecessary chaos to the ongoing drama.

Ye took to Instagram on Thursday to post a photo of a headline alleging that Eilish’s comments were meant to call out Scott, with the caption: “COME ON BILLIE WE LOVE YOU PLEASE APOLOGIZE TO TRAV AND TO THE FAMILIES OF THE PEOPLE WHO LOST THEIR LIVES NO ONE INTENDED THIS TO HAPPEN TRAV DIDN’T HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING WHEN HE WAS ON STAGE AND WAS VERY HURT BY WHAT HAPPENED AND YES TRAV WILL BE WITH ME AT COACHELLA BUT NOW I NEED BILLIE TO APOLOGIZE BEFORE I PERFORM.”

While Eilish’s comments certainly felt referential to what happened at Astroworld, it’s slightly more complex than Ye’s post might suggest.

The horrors that occurred at Scott’s Houston concert brought attention to the fact that crowd safety at shows often goes overlooked, and that there is a lingering onus now on artists to make sure their shows are safe for fans. Any comments Billie could have made in that moment — where she is also trying to keep an entire stadium calm while her show is paused — are going to feel like a reference to Astroworld.

After such a horrific event, unfortunately crowd safety and Travis Scott’s name are going to be linked in the public’s perception. That doesn’t mean that every reference to concert safety — and any artist stopping a show to try and take care of fans — is a dig at Scott. And while Scott might have unfairly received more blame in the media for fans dying at his show than the concert organizations that threw the festival, it’s hard to watch the footage of people being trampled, dead bodies being lifted, and people begging for help while he continues to perform and not place some responsibility with him.

The incident is going to have ripple effects, both in increasing safety and in references back to Scott, and Ye doesn’t seem to understand those repercussions or want that for his fellow Kardashian/Jenner baby father. Whether Ye would actually cancel his Coachella gig over the issue remains to be seen, but it doesn’t feel like Billie is going to give him the performative apology he is looking for. She commented on the Instagram post, “literally never said anything about travis. was just helping a fan.” Scott is now taking heat as well for liking Ye’s post.

Perhaps this is just another one of those lessons that life is best lived off of social media.