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He has a history of saying very wrong things at very wrong times.
By Alexandra Blogier — Written on May 12, 2023
Matty Healy, the lead singer of The 1975, who’s rumored to be Taylor Swift’s newest love interest, has a storied history of being controversial both online and in real life. Healy, 34, has maintained an on-again, off-again relationship with social media, quitting, rejoining, and re-quitting platforms as it serves him.
In April 2023, Healy deactivated Instagram and told fans during a performance in Australia that “The era of being a f—g a—hole is coming to an end… I can’t perform offstage anymore. I’ve had enough. Haven’t you guys had enough?”
While Healy’s been laying relatively low recently, his past reveals another story.
Why do people hate Matty Healy? Here are 5 problematic controversies that have irked fans.
Here is a timeline of Healy's problematic behavior over the years.
In 2018, Matty Healy made sweeping, racist generalizations about hip-hop
In a 2018 interview with The Fader Magazine, Healy was asked, “What's your perspective on drugs in the music industry right now?”
He answered that “one of the problems is the youth of hip-hop,” mentioning the prevalence of drug references in the genre. “Those things get weeded out the longer those things exist. The reason misogyny doesn't happen in rock and roll anymore is because it's a vocabulary that existed for so long is that it got weeded out. It still exists in hip-hop because [the genre] is so young, but it'll stop.”
Hip-hop fans felt Healy spoke out of turn and patronizingly about a predominantly Black genre of music.
After the interview’s publication, Healy took to Twitter to offer an explanation and semi-apology, tweeting, “What I said isn’t correct. And it’s not all a misquote. Just for clarity I said that misogyny wasn’t ALLOWED in rock and roll [nowadays] in a way it is in hip hop– not that it doesn’t exist, that’s maybe a misquote as I’m aware of the misogyny in rock and roll…I would never deny the RAMPANT misogyny that exists in rock and roll.”
He later came back to Twitter, stating, “Just to clarify I’m not apologizing for saying ‘rock music is void of misogyny.’. I didn’t say that… I’m apologizing for the fact my words could INSINUATE that misogyny in culture and music is an exclusively hip-hop (Black) issue. I do not believe that.”
Healy’s multi-part tweet to explain himself lacks any form of him taking accountability for his statement. Instead, he chose to apologize for “insinuating” a racist and misogynist perspective on the music industry, rather than outright claim the words he, himself, spoke.
Matty Healy made anti-Islamic statements in 2019.
Healy gave an interview that was originally published in a Mexican outlet called Brut Mexico, in which he defended his position as an atheist, while simultaneously insulting Islam.
Healy stated, “Nowadays, I honestly think, if you’re piously religious— if you’re dogmatically faithful— you should be kind of ashamed of yourself. I’m bored with certain religions as well because certain racisms are aligned with them.”
Healy’s blanket statement about religion failed to recognize the various nuances of faith and spiritual practice.
He continued, “You can’t criticize Islam as a set of ideas… because you’re inherently criticizing people. But that’s a problem with society because Islamophobia does exist, people are bigoted. But what that really is is thick, bigoted people not liking brown people. Whereas I love people, I love brown people.”
While it appears that Healy was attempting to offer some sort of message on acceptance and inclusivity, his statement read more like a white person essentializing an entire varied group of people to prove his point. Healy kept going, exclaiming, “I just don’t know when I’m allowed to be offended. Religious people are always allowed to be offended… Where are my rights as an atheist?”
Much of the hate toward Matty Healy stems from his 2020 response to the BLM movement.
In May 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police officer Derek Chauvin and the subsequent nationwide protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, Healy entered the cultural conversation, yet his response didn’t have the effect he intended.
Healy’s chosen form of allyship was to go on Twitter and call for people in the All Lives Matter brigade to stop “facilitating the end of Black ones.” He then posted the video for the 1975 song “Love If We Made It,” which contains the lyrics: “selling melanin and then suffocate the Black men, start with misdemeanors and we’ll make a business out of them.”
Healy was dragged online for using the framework of Black Lives Matter as an avenue to promote himself and his music. Soon after, Healy quit Twitter.
In October 2022, Healy addressed his actions in an interview with NME Magazine. He stated that “By that point, my reaction in the room to all that Twitter sh-t was like, ‘Oh f– off! You know that I’m not using this as an opportunity to monetize the half-a-pence I get paid for a f—g YouTube play’. What I’m saying is, ‘Here’s something I’ve really thought about,’ and all you’ve been asking for four days is ‘Say something about it!’ So I said, ‘Here’s what I think.'”
Once again, Healy centered himself and his creative work during a conversation about race in the United States. As a white person, an essential part of being an actual ally, and not a performative one, is to decenter oneself and amplify Black voices. Healy, however, did the exact opposite.
Healy also paraphrased a quotation from artist Nick Cave, saying, “I refuse now to comment on the morally obvious. I’m not proving that I’m not racist. I’m not proving that I’m pro-women. I’m not proving I’m on the left. I’ve done that dance, I’ve done that game, I’ve done the work. I’m not interested in any insinuation that I am bigoted or racist or sexist for the enjoyment of someone on the internet.”
In January 2023, Healy participated in a racist, misogynist commentary during an appearance on The Adam Friedland Show.
In January 2023, Healy appeared alongside Friedland and co-host Nick Mullen and engaged in several questionable lines of discussion. He mentioned messaging Ice Spice on Instagram, to which the podcast hosts responded with a slew of racist and misogynist comments about the rapper.
The host joked about the rapper sounding like an “Inuit Spice Girl” — even using a slur for Inuit people at one point — or a “chubby Chinese lady” and went on to mimic Chinese and Hawaiian accents.
At one point Healy also encouraged the hosts in making impressions of Japanese people working in concentration camps. His apathy was criticized on Twitter by the artist YUNGBLUD, who tweeted, “Love listening to three privileged white dudes sit around and objectify a young Black female artist who’s blowing up.”
Healy later offered Ice Spice an apology during a concert in New Zealand, without actually taking any accountability for his behavior. “I just feel a bit bad, and I’m kind of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you. Ice Spice, I’m sorry. It’s not because I’m annoyed that me joking got misconstrued. It’s because I don’t want Ice Spice to think I’m a d-ck. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.”
By mentioning his annoyance that his so-called attempt at humor was taken out of context, he put his own feelings at the forefront of the apology.
Also in January 2023, Matty Healy kissed fans at concerts and blurred the lines of consent.
In recent appearances with The 1975, Healy has made a repeated show of kissing fans onstage, even going so far as to put a fan’s thumb in his mouth.
Healy asks for consent and checks fans’ ages before he does so, yet consent could be blurry in this situation, as his level of fame creates an imbalanced power dynamic between him and his fans.
Healy told Rolling Stone UK, “What I’m not moving into is my ‘anti-woke’ era,” though no one appears to be accusing him of that. He continued, “I won’t be doing any apologies nowadays. I’m not apologizing for stuff, just because I don’t think you should or I should or anyone should who isn’t a bigot or a racist or violent or a criminal. I don’t believe that I am. So, I just want to make sure there’s context so I don’t have to.”
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers celebrity gossip, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.