The ever-divisive frontman Matty Healy of Manchester-formed alternative band The 1975 has defended his controversial equal rights stunt – the same-sex kiss that resulted in his group’s blacklisting from Malaysia.
During The 1975’s headline set at the Good Vibes Festival last July, Healy had attempted to demonstrate his disdain for Malaysian anti-LGBTQ+ laws by locking lips with bassist Ross MacDonald. Thirty minutes later, the band were asked to end their show and leave with immediate effect.
The following day, much to the disappointment of thousands of ticket-holders, Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil announced the cancellation of the entire three-day festival. Naturally, the incident didn’t take long to spark a major online dispute, with many condemning Healy for disrespecting foreign culture.
In the aftermath, The 1975 faced legal action, with the festival’s organiser, Future Sound Asia, demanding the band pay £2 million in damages. Healy and co. heeded their lawyers’ advice and kept quiet about the lawsuit for months, but now, the singer has finally addressed the controversy in a 10-minute speech.
On Monday, Healy told fans at a Dallas concert that he had been advised not to talk about what happened in Malaysia, but that he had “cracked” and “genuinely just [didn’t] care anymore”. Reading from a prepared statement on his phone, the frontman launched into a lengthy defence of his actions at the Good Vibes Festival:
“The 1975 did not waltz into Malaysia unannounced – they were invited to headline a festival by a government who had full knowledge of the band’s well-publicised political views and its routine stage show. […] Me kissing Ross was not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government; it was an ongoing part of The 1975 stage show which had been performed many times prior.”
“To eliminate any routine part of the show in an effort to appease the Malaysian authorities’ bigoted views of LGBTQ people would be a passive endorsement of those politics. As liberals are so fond of saying, ‘silence causes violence, use your platform’, so we did that. […]”
“The Malaysian authorities were irate because homosexuality is criminalised and punishable by death in their authoritarian theocracy. That is the violent reality obscured by the more friendly term “cultural customs.”
The singer described some of the online response as “puzzling”, adding that “lots of people, who appear to be liberal people, contended that the performance was an insensitive display of hostility against the cultural customs of the Malaysian government and that the kiss was a performative gesture of allyship.”
Addressing these claims, Healy remarked: “The idea of calling out a performer for being performative is mind-numbingly redundant as an exercise. Performing is a performer’s job.”
In defence of accusations that condemned his stunt as a form of colonialism, Healy said that “to call The 1975’s performance colonialism is a complete inversion of the word’s meaning” and that “[they] have no power at all to enforce [their] will on anyone in Malaysia.” In fact, the singer revealed off-handedly that they were briefly imprisoned by the Malaysian authorities.
Watch the full speech below:
Matty Healy’s full speech on Malaysia incident in Fort Worth tonight
Thanks to Emily and talktorossabouit#The1975 #SATVB pic.twitter.com/1DfP18kXND
— The 1975 TH (@the1975_thteam) October 10, 2023
