Billie Eilish Delivers Ballbreaker Blast to Billionaires at 2025 WSJ Innovators Awards Art of Giving

Billie Eilish [IG] made a classic Ballbreaker move at Wednesday's WSJ Magazine [IG] 2025 Innovator Awards, where Eilish was receiving the Music Innovator Award in New York City on Wednesday, Oct. 29.

Eilish had platinum-level money in her sight with the best binoculars money can buy when she planned her acceptance award speech for last night. Now that we know that Dr. Priscilla Chan had already received her award before Billie, we have tempered slightly our euthusiasm over her performance.

Ballbreaker Billie Eilish Let’s It Rip at WSJ Magazine 2025 Innovator Awards

In Billie’s case, the target of her remarks was assumed to be Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. Also in attendance were baby billionaire George Lucas and his wife Melody Hobson, who won the Innovator Design award.

Of course, the Eilish comments have gone viral to billionaires everywhere. Writing the exerpt here, linking into our total post, but checking around, Harpers Bazaar is only reporting the unoffensive, first paragraph in Billie’s zinger, when this morning was the opposite case on most websites. At AOC, you must follow the link top of post to read this morning’s analysis and both paragraph’s of Billie’s comments. But they are also in the new video below.

We cited the fact that Dr. Priscilla Chan received the Innovator award in Philanthropy for their jointly-donated Facebook shares then valued at $45 billion to their top-level Chan Zuckerberg initiative [CZI] and several spokes in the wheel institutes, such as the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub in San Francisco, the CZ Biohub NY, and the CZ Imaging Institute, each with a specific focus within the broader goal of preventing, curing, or managing all diseases.

Billie came after Dr. Chan in the awards order, and the Zuckerberg-Chan $45 billion donation to CZI was already acknowledged and praised in the audience when Eilish received her award from Karlie Kloss. Her short speech is playing well across the internet, and with the crisis that America is moving towards this weekend, Eilish will inspire our young people. Goddess knows, they need it.

AOC will review articles written about CZI from writers we trust. Who owns the patents on the medical research, for example? Writers from The Atlantic would dig into a subject like this one.

For Anne, a Ballbreaker always holds her fire if there are any changes in her attack plan. For me, the CZI award to Dr. Chan by Karlie Kloss would have been a second big, blinking red stop light. I would have still gone with Billie’s first paragraph but found a less snarky second paragraph.

We note that Billie Eilish herself donated $11.5 million last night to several organizations supporting the needs that she addresses in her speech.

We will have the challenge of very hungry Americans on our hands this weekend because Republicans are determined to draw blood on this one. This is why I so loved Billie’s speech until I learned about CZI.

Anne is clear now why Mark Zuckerberg sat stonefaced with Billie’s precise billionaire-blow arrow aimed in his direction and with a reference to ‘shorties’. Yikes! And even though our speech might have gone a bit differently, Billie Eilish deserves high praise for being one of the few people willing to put these difficult topics front and center in the public narrative.