004/ The chaotic, self-absorbed radicalism of Matty Healy
Last night, Malaysia banned The 1975, who were performing at the Good Vibes festival in Kuala Lumpur. Matty Healy spoke out in support of LGBTQ+ rights and shared a snog onstage with bassist Ross MacDonald.
Inevitably, moments after that, the set got cut and Healy’s mob left, telling the crowd they were banned from Kuala Lumpur.
Unsurprisingly, it being Matty Healy, rather than a carefully focused, moving or uplifting statement in support of LGBTQ+ rights (perhaps something like Olly Alexander’s show-stopping onstage talk at Glastonbury a few years ago) Healy’s long chatty bit actually begins with him moaning about people on Tik Tok judging him for how he held a friend’s child in a video. So it is self-focused at the start, which is pretty indicative of Healy’s vibe. His on-the-hoof method for propping LGBTQ+ rights goes something like —
I feel bad for you guys. I made a mistake — no fucking not that — I made a mistake,
when we were booking shows I wasn’t looking into it and then…
I don’t see the fucking point, right, I do not see the point of inviting The 1975 to a country
and then telling us who we can have sex with. Your government are a bunch of…
It’s pretty funny. Loads of excellent f-bombs. He claims that he tried to pull the show altogether the day before, but got talked into doing it, because “you can’t let the kids down, because they’re not the government”. We know he’s articulate when he wants to be, yet Healy cannot manage a diatribe on behalf of one group’s rights, without using a word that wholly demeans another group, specifically the anti-disability slur that caught out Lizzo and Beyoncé last year. Healy cannot think carefully and quickly enough what he needs to say for the best impact, or — more likely — he genuinely doesn’t give a shit about his language, it’s an authentic moment. To whatever extent the Matty Healy ‘afterparty sleazeball’ onstage character is real, or performed, kind of doesn’t matter: he physically spits at the Malaysian government. As typical at 1975 shows, he’s swigging from a bottle and smoking throughout the sequence, which gives the Malaysian authorities a whole bunch of additional ‘inappropriate behaviours’ to stick him with, alongside his core crime, which is to start the long intro for the next song, then call over bass guitarist Ross MacDonald, for a passionate onstage snog.
This actual kiss does feel more planned. Healy (of course) is getting the lion’s share of attention but there were two of them committing this illegal act in Kuala Lumpur that gets the set cut and the band kicked offstage. Hats off to Ross MacDonald, who is probably less protected by individual fame, although one assumes he’ll have the same infrastructural protective resources as Healy. Presumably they’ll both get safely out of the country without actually being arrested, though I could be wrong, I’ll stand corrected if that doesn’t happen and it becomes an international incident. If it was Moscow they wouldn’t hesitate to lock them up and wait for the UK to come begging.
If you wanna invite me here, to do a show, you can fuck off.
I’ll take your money, you can ban me, but I’ve done this before
and it doesn’t feel good and I’m fucked off.
It sums up Malaysia’s current lack of freedom, that New Straits Times and other mainstream Kuala Lumpur media reporting on the incident today are pixellating out the kiss, although you can still see exactly what’s happening. As Healy says, the whole thing is ridiculous.
Whatever one feels about Healy’s various previous outbursts, his racist comments and toxic behaviours, it can’t be denied that this is a powerful, positive and timely symbolic act. It took real courage, on both Healy and MacDonald’s parts. It’s in the Peter Tatchell ballpark of non-violent direct action, rather than just marching through central London with thousands of friends, waving a Pride flag. These two musicians have authentically risked being arrested and detained — and one can’t imagine either will be able to travel to (or through) Malaysia again, unless that country gets more progressive leadership. Healy’s done it before too, kissing a fan onstage in Dubai in 2019.
So he stands up. Just don’t expect him to be on-message or tidy or strategic about it.
In the aftermath, the government may punish the whole festival. No report has been lodged with the police yet, but Malaysia’s Minister of Communications, Fahmi Fadzil (already a divisive figure in his country for being the public face of conservative social policy) has summoned Good Vibes organisers to explain what happened. They may escape punishment though, because they acted to stop the show without waiting for formal legal intervention.
I do think about all the other bands who were performing at Good Vibes, given the same platform, who didn’t say anything, or do anything, and didn’t get banned. Dermot Kennedy and The Strokes were booked for Good Vibes, among others.
Last month at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, one of the stages was sponsored by Amazon Music. We all know what streaming is doing to the careers of artists. We all know how Amazon treats its workers and what it has done to local economies, worldwide. During that weekend, I only saw one artist say anything, which was the goth-ish indie act Wednesday, from North Carolina, whose singer Karly Hartzman criticised that they were having to perform under the brand and called out Amazon’s appalling treatment of labour. At the time, I was wholly with her, but also thinking, it’s mid-afternoon, they’re just not a well-known enough act for this to get traction. Still, better speak than not. The previous year, quite a few artists had criticised the crypto brand Binance sponsoring another stage, and oh look, they were proved about as correct as it’s possible to be.
Anyway, I tend to be of the ‘don’t go in the first place’ school, for example, unlike many of my (even progressive) friends, I support the cultural boycott of Israel and I don’t think artists should be performing in Tel Aviv at all, whatever they might say onstage. Don’t worry, I’ll leave that for another time. But if a band is going to travel and perform somewhere with vile leadership and dodgy laws that oppress people, Tel Aviv, or Moscow, or Dubai, or Riyadh, or various American states, or, yes, Kuala Lumpur, what I love to see — at the very least — is those artists stand up and say something, to show vocal solidarity with the oppressed people of that region, to call out whatever crime that government is committing.
And fair play to them, that’s what Healy, in his own chaotic way, and MacDonald, in his quieter, silent one, did yesterday. If big bands can’t even do that, they’re just another cog.