Billie Eilish called out billionaires. Mark Zuckerberg was in the audience.

• Billie Eilish confronted the billionaires in the room while accepting an award from The Wall Street Journal.
• “Why are you a billionaire?” the singer asked a crowd that included Mark Zuckerberg.
• Billionaires have come under fire as economic inequality has ballooned.

When Billie Eilish took the stage at last night’s WSJ Magazine Innovator Awards, she addressed some audience members directly.

“If you have money, it would be great to use it for good things and maybe give it to some people that need it,” she said as the audience cheered.

“Love you all, but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me,” she continued, to some laughter. “If you are a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties.”

The chuckles became more strained after that, possibly because the onlookers — who earlier in the night posed against the aubergine backdrop at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art and enjoyed caviar and blackberry mocktails — included some of the wealthiest people on earth.

There was Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, worth $226.2 billion, whose wife, Priscilla Chan, was being honored for her philanthropic work. Filmmaker George Lucas, worth $5.3 billion, accepted an award with his wife, investor Mellody Hobson, for innovation in design.

Representatives for Eilish, Zuckerberg, and Lucas did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Chan and Zuckerberg previously pledged to give away 99% of their Meta shares in their lifetimes. Lucas has pledged to give away at least half of his wealth during his lifetime. He and Hobson also fully funded the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is set to open next year.

As economic inequality has ballooned, billionaires have come under fire. Over the summer, a series of protests condemning billionaires drew activists to wealthy enclaves like the Hamptons. Billionaires are also a frequent target of Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner for the mayor of New York City.

As for Eilish, she is practicing as she preaches.

Earlier in the night, Stephen Colbert, who presented the “Birds of a Feather” singer with the music innovator award, said the singer would be donating $11.5 million of the proceeds from her “Hit Me Hard and Soft” tour to combating food insecurity and climate change.

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