It’s been a couple of months since The 1975 was banned from Malaysia over lead singer, Matt Healy’s rant on stage at Good Vibes Festival 2023, causing the entire festival to get cancelled.
And while it looks like everyone else has moved on with their lives, it looks like Matt Healy is not ready to let the incident go.
During The 1975’s show in Dallas, the United States (US), Matt decided to pause the show to go on another rant, this time about being banned from Malaysia. He even wrote his entire speech down in his phone prior to the show and read it aloud to audience. The 1975 TH Twitter page recently shared the transcribed speech.
Speaking to the band’s fan in Dallas, Healy shared, “But I don’t know how familiar you all are with the lore of this band, but we got banned from Malaysia this year. And it has nothing to do with you guys, but unfortunately there’s so many incredibly stupid people on the internet that I’ve just cracked.”
“And everyone keeps telling me that you can’t talk about Malaysia, don’t talk about what happened in Malaysia, so I’m going to talk about it at length. And unfortunately you have to listen to it. And this is long, so. You’ll be alright. But, I am pissed off, to be frank.”
He started off by claiming that the Malaysian government was well aware of the band’s political stance when they were invited to perform here.
“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 with its well-publicised political views and its routine stage show. Malaysian festival organisers’ familiarity with the band was the basis of our invitation,”
“Me kissing Ross was not a stunt simply to provoke the government, it was an ongoing part of The 1975 stage show which had been performed many times prior. Similarly, we did not change out set that night to play, you know, pro-freedom of speech or pro-gay songs. 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,” Healy said.
He added that they were surprised that liberal Malaysians were also outraged by what he considered as their consistent pro-LGBTQ+ stage show.
“Lots of people, 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’.”
Healy also went on to explain that as performers, The 1975 was only doing their job of being performative and “that’s why audiences go to f*cking shows”.
He went on to rant about how us Malaysians allegedly considered his on-stage kiss with fellow bandmate, Ross, as a form of colonialism and that the band was apparently briefly detained by the Malaysian authorities.
“Despite the band being amateur jiu-jitsu enthusiasts, we’re not very good, we have no power at all to enforce out will on anyone in Malaysia. In fact, it was the Malaysian authorities who briefly imprisoned us,” he said, adding that bands should not have not conform to other country’s policies.
“It should be expected that if you invite dozens of Western performers to your country, they’ll bring their Western values with them.”
You can read his full rant here.
You can also check out clips of this incident here:
@bgrind99 Matty speaking on the 1975’s conflict following the Malaysian governments invitation. Dallas Fort Worth 2023 Show @the1975 #the1975live #the1975
@jb9oh9
@kalimesser so thoughtful #the1975fortworth #the1975tour
Full speech that matty did tonight to anyone who missed him calling out the Malaysian government for banning them this is how you use your platform to speak on important stuff like this he went off pic.twitter.com/2SanocrTFA
— esra (@1989healy) October 10, 2023
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