Matty Healy gets publicly called out for racism by artist at Glastonbury

Artist Rina Sawayama used her Glastonbury stage to air a grievance and publicly call out Matty Healy for racism on after The 1975 frontman made some pretty controversial comments.

Back in February, Healy faced major backlash after a resurfaced clip of The Adam Friedland Show podcast went viral, which saw him joining in with mockery of rapper Ice Spice and admitting to watching racially controversial pornography titled 'Ghetto Gaggers'.

While Sawayama didn't name 34-year-old Healy directly on the Glasto stage yesterday (24 June), it was beyond doubt who the 32-year-old artist was addressing when she said she has 'had enough' as she launched into her track 'STFU'.

Rina Sawayama calls out 1975 singer, and former director at Dirty Hit, Matty Healy at Glastonbury over interpolation of Korn's "Blind" used as intro to her song "STFU" (2023)pic.twitter.com/bwAC6Caf1V

— crazy ass moments in nu metal history (@numetal_moment) June 25, 2023

As she sat on the stage in front of the heaving Glastonbury crowds with her mic in hand, she said: "I wrote this because I was sick and tired of these micro-aggressions.

"So tonight, this goes out to a white man that watches Ghetto Gaggers and mocks Asian people on a podcast."

She then shouted: "He also owns my masters! I've had enough!" as the crowd cheered.

Sawayama's last comment is presumably a reference to Dirty Hit, her record label that also releases The 1975's music and is run by the band’s manager, Jamie Oborne.

Healy was a director of the company between December 2018 and April 2023.

The comments in question from February came after podcast host Adam Friedland and his co-host Nick Mullen brought up an incident, in which Friedland and a woman walked in on Healy masturbating to the offensive 'hardcore pornography' just '30 seconds' after they left a party at Healy's house.

Healy also made racist comments about rapper Ice Spice in the same episode of the podcast, with him describing trying to DM her on Instagram before apparently confusing her heritage.

The group said that she was both Inuit and Chinese, before imitating and mocking the accents of both communities.

The racially offensive episode was later pulled from both Spotify and Apple Music.

After the comments dogged the musician and the band for months, repeatedly resurfacing with anger on Reddit threads, the frontman finally addressed them at a The 1975 gig in New Zealand.

Healy apologised for the comments made about the rapper on stage in Auckland saying that they'd been misunderstood.

He said: “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**k. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.”

He was asked by The New Yorker whether his comments were a deliberate device to stir up controversy and bait fans, to which he replied: “A little bit. But it doesn’t actually matter.

"Nobody is sitting there at night slumped at their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and goes, ‘What’s wrong, darling?’ and they go, ‘It’s just this thing with Matty Healy.’ That doesn’t happen.”

LADbible has contacted representatives of Matty Healy for comment.