Matty Healy claimed The 1975 were “briefly imprisoned” by the Malaysian authorities, as he defended kissing his bandmate on stage during a festival in the country.
During their concert in Fort Worth near Dallas, Texas, the band’s frontman addressed his behaviour at the Good Vibes Festival in July where he made a speech about homosexuality, which is illegal in Malaysia, and kissed bassist Ross MacDonald.
The festival cancelled the event afterwards and the organisers later asked the the band to pay more than £2 million in damages for allegedly breaching a contract which stated that their set would adhere to “all local guidelines and regulations”.
Official statement from @goodvibesfest pic.twitter.com/XqsWegteWt
— Good Vibes Festival (@GoodVibesFest) July 22, 2023
Healy told fans at the Fort Worth show on Monday that he had been advised not to talk about what happened in Malaysia but said he wanted to explain his side as he was “pissed off”.
Reading a speech from his phone, he said: “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’s well-publicised political views and its routine stage show…
“Me kissing Ross was not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government, it was an ongoing part of The 1975 stage show which had been performed many times prior.”
In a clip posted on social media of him delivering the speech, he also noted that the band chose not to change their set to play “pro-freedom of speech, 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 have been a passive endorsement of those politics”, he added.
“As liberals are so fond of saying ‘Silence equals violence, use your platform’ – so we did that. And that is where things got complicated.”
The singer described some of the online response as “liberal outrage” and said their reaction to the band “remaining consistent with our pro-LGBTQ stage show” was the “most puzzling thing”.
He added: “Lots of people, who appear to be 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.”
In response to these claims, Healy said: “The idea of calling out a performer for being performative is mind-numbingly redundant as an exercise. Performing is a performer’s job.”
Addressing those who claimed the kiss was “a form of colonialism”, he said: “To call The 1975’s performance colonialism is a complete inversion of the word’s meaning…
“We have no (power) at all to enforce our will on anyone in Malaysia. In fact, it was the Malaysian authorities who briefly imprisoned us.”
During previous shows in the band’s At Their Very Best tour, Healy kissed a number of fans from the crowd as well as a crowd safety worker mid-performance while singing in Denmark.
He has also performed bizarre antics including completing a series of push-ups and eating a raw steak live on stage.