The 1975 frontman Matty Healy has deleted his Twitter account after he had to face a backlash from the Twitter community regarding a tweet about the death of George Floyd. On Monday, the black man died from police brutality after a white Minnesota police officer knelt on the neck of the 46-year old during an arrest. A bystander recorded the scenario in which Floyd repeatedly says “I can’t breathe.” The footage has caused international outrage and many celebrities took to their huge number of followers to raise awareness.
Matty Healy was one of the musicians that spoke up, releasing a tweet that said “If you truly believe that ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ you need to stop facilitating the end of black ones.” The tweet contained a link to a The 1975 song called ‘Love It If We Made It’, a song that talks about racism and police brutality. Due to the link being included in his tweet, the singer had to face a huge backlash of people accusing him of using the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement to promote the band’s music. The 1975 released their latest album ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’ last week, which made a lot of people think that the tweet was only made to gain more attention about the new record. The song linked in Healy’s tweet includes lyrics such as “We’re fucking in a car, shooting heroin. Saying controversial things just for the hell of it. Selling melanin and then suffocate the black men.”
Even though there a lot of people criticising him, the singer has also had a lot of fans defending him, saying that their beloved idol wanted nothing but raising awareness. Healy posted another tweet in which he apologised, after a lot of people criticised his previous tweet: “Sorry I did not link my song in that tweet to make it about me it’s just that the song is literally about this disgusting situation and speaks more eloquently than I can on Twitter.” After tweeting his apology, Matty Healy deleted his account.
‘Suffocate the black men’ is literally a lyric in the song. It’s heavily about the police brutality that exists in America. Educate yourselves you bunch of one direction fans. Matty Healy is doing more to influence change than your childish cancel culture. Try cancel real issues! pic.twitter.com/bnBMC9YhRm
— Mason (@IAmMaysonL) May 28, 2020
The officers involved have been fired, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey announced. The clip of the black man crying out for help and getting ignored has caused riots in the state, with many stores getting looted and even getting burned down. The video of George Floyd suffocating sparked international outrage on racism in the United States.
