‘Celebrities Lacking In Integrity’
A review of The 1975’s Glastonbury Performance
2025 continues to be a year full of disappointing live performances for me (though it hasn’t been all bad — I really ought to get around to doing a write up of my time at Lido Festival at the beginning of this month…), but at least I hadn’t forked out the cash and trekked all the way to Glastonbury for this disappointingly safe performance by my favourite band, The 1975.
Yes, the Friday night headliners of Glastonbury were the Matty Healy-fronted art pop outfit, The 1975, returning for this one-off performance after a 15 month hiatus since their last performance on the Still At Their Very Best Tour in March of 2024. For 1975 fans, it was set to be an exciting night — the band we love were headlining one of the biggest and most important stages in the UK, streamed live nationally via the BBC. Fan speculation and theorizing ran rampant once they were announced to be headlining — what would the set list be? Would the band share anything of the album they are said to be working on currently, their first since 2022’s Being Funny In A Foreign Language? Would Healy and co. ditch the house set design of their previous tour, as well as the black ties, for something more casual? Would they, as is tradition for Glasto headliners, bring out a special guest, and if so, who? But, the question I was asking myself above all, and it is something I believe many 1975 fans were asking also, is were the band going to make a public statement about the ongoing genocide in Gaza?
Now, this might seem weird to expect from a pop band, but anyone that knows The 1975’s track record of outspoken political messaging at their tours would not be surprised by such an expectation. After all, this is a band who, when they were headlining the Good Vibes Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in July of 2023, protested Malaysia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws by having frontman Matty Healy kiss bass player, Ross Macdonald (this was not the first time the band had protested such laws, as they pulled a similar stunt in Dubai in 2019, and were banned from the UAE as a result). Healy then proceeded to go on a profanity-laced speech criticizing Malaysia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws. The consequences of this action were not only the cancellation of the festival and the banning of the band from Malaysia, but a law suit from festival organizers Future Sound Asia, who sought approximately £1.9 million in damages from the band for a breach of contract. The band, thankfully, won the case and were found not to be personally liable for the cancellation of the Good Vibes Festival.
This action, as with the prior incident in Dubai, was met with a mixed response, with many dubbing it as a sort of performative activism from Healy, in that it didn’t necessarily change anything about Malaysia’s LGBTQ+ laws, but harmed fans who had paid money to see the band live, only to have the performance cut short after 30 minutes — all the while Healy was able to swan off, having publicly won himself some progressive brownie points. Some dubbed Healy a white-saviour and accused him of being insensitive to Malaysian cultural practices and its state religion of Islam.
In the aftermath of the public outrage, Healy took time out of one of the band’s gigs in Dallas to address the backlash. Reading from a pre-prepared speech from his phone, Healy said:
“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. As liberals are so fond of saying, ‘Silence causes violence, use your platform’, so we did that.”
Continuing:
“It was the liberal outrage against our band for remaining consistent with our pro-LGBTQ stage show which was the most puzzling thing. 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’.”
“To start the idea of calling out a performer for being performative is mind-numbingly redundant as an exercise, performing is a performer’s job. The stage is a place for artists’ expressions which are inherently dramatised. That’s why people go to fucking shows.”
“Other people, other apparent liberal people, contended that the kiss itself was a form of colonialism. That the 1975, in the rich tradition of evil white men past, was forcing its Western beliefs on the Eastern world.”
“If you truly believe that artists have a responsibility to uphold their liberal virtues by using their massive platforms, then those artists should be judged by the danger and inconvenience that they face for doing so, not by the rewards they receive for parroting consensus. There’s nothing particularly stunning or brave about changing your fucking profile picture whilst you’re sat in your house in LA. I’m really fucking pissed off with this shit.”
“The idea that it’s incumbent upon artists to cater to the local sensitivities of wherever they are invited to perform sets a very dangerous precedent.”
Big talk right? And I’m inclined to agree with Healy — I can understand why fans in attendance would be disappointed by the cancellation of the set, but the blame oughtn’t fall on Healy in that instance, but, as the High Court found, on the festival organizers, and, more generally, the homophobic state of Malaysia. Don’t be surprised that an inherently political band like The 1975, the writers of songs like Love It If We Made It (which Healy performed immediately after his speech addressing the Malaysian incident, and which includes lines such as “Write it on a piece of stone, a beach of drowning three-year-olds // Rest in peace Lil Peep, the poetry is in the streets // Jesus save us, modernity has failed us”), People (“Wake up, wake up, wake up, We are appalling and we need to stop just watching shit in bed // And I know it sounds boring and we like things that are funny // But we need to get this in our fucking heads // The economy’s a goner // republic’s gone banana, ignore it if you wanna”) and Loving Someone (“Besides celebrities lacking in integrity // Holding up the status quo instead of showing the kids // That they matter”), gets political at your venue.
The 1975 has never shied away from politics — the opening track of their 2019 album Notes on A Conditional Form is a nearly 5 minute long monologue from Greta Thunberg over a sparse instrumental, urging people to take action to save the world from the existential threat of climate breakdown. Similar to the Malaysia and Dubai incidents, Healy also paused a performance the band were doing at Alabama’s Hang Out Fest in 2019 to deliver an impassioned speech against the state’s abortion ban. The entirety of their last tour, The 1975 At Their Very Best, and its extension, the Still At Their Very Best tour, was figured as a meta-commentary on the cult of toxic masculinity and right-wing radicalisation through the vector of social media in the wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The tour was particularly notable as it saw Healy pausing the gig to enact a performance piece, where he assumed the identity of a young man radicalised by the right-wing pipeline — at various shows, Healy would sit in front of a library of tv screens and gawk at them while clips from the likes of Andrew Tate, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, and others played in quick succession. More dramatic than that, he would also frequently end performances by consuming raw meat on stage, and then proceed to crawl into a TV — a pointed satire of social media influencers like Joe Rogan, or Brian Michael Johnson, a.k.a. The Liver King, who encouraged young men to consume large amounts of raw unprocessed organs and meat for their supposed health benefits.
The list of Healy and the band’s political activism goes on and on, but you get the point: The 1975 is a band whose music and live acts often address political issues in an urgent, irreverent way. That is, until they headlined Glastonbury this weekend…
Many fans have noticed Healy and the band’s relative radio silence on the topic of the ongoing genocide in Gaza — after all, the band were still publicly performing 5 months after the 7th of October incident, but made no public comments about the Israeli government’s devastating actions in the Gaza strip which have caused the death of at least 56,000 civilians (though, this is a gross underestimate, and the actual loss of life is unverifiable as UNRWA and other experts are being refused entry into Gaza by the Israeli government). On the contrary, during one performance in November 2023, in Madison Square Garden, Healy sarcastically stated: “Now I’m aware that you all came here not to hear the songs that you like, but to hear my take on Israel-Palestine. Well from the comments, that’s what I thought you do want? People like me need to talk about Israel-Palestine. I’m the guy […] don’t be a fucking idiot.” If one compares this to the response of Healy’s contemporaries, such as the Irish post-punk band Fontaines DC, who projected Palestinian flags and messages like “Free Palestine” and “Israel is committing genocide. Use your voice” during their Primavera Sound set at the beginning of this month, and who have also collaborated with Bohemian FC to produce a launch of new football shirts as Fontaines merchandise to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians (notably, Greta Thunberg was pictured wearing the shirt on the Freedom Flotilla earlier this month, which sought to break the illegal humanitarian blockade Israel is enforcing on Gaza), and whose guitarist, Carlos O’Connell, used the opportunity of an acceptance speech for Best Album at the Rolling Stones UK Awards, to condemn artists for their silence on the night, stating “It’s kind of weird that this is the first time it’s been said all night, but I’m just gonna say it: Free Palestine. Fuck Netanyahu. Fuck Zionism. Free Palestine”, The 1975 pales in comparison. Or, compare The 1975’s silence on Gaza, to Northern Irish hip-hop trio, Kneecap, who have obviously made headlines for their outspoken condemnation of Israel and its actions in Palestine, using their platform at Coachella to talk about the ongoing genocide, likewise projecting “Fuck Israel. Free Palestine.” Kneecap, of course, have also allegedly endorsed proscribed terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah for their resistance to Israel’s criminal actions, which has landed them in hot water, not just in the court of public opinion, but in the actual British criminal courts, having been charged with terrorist offences. Kneecap publicly responded to the legal case by stating, “We are on the right side of history. You are not. We will fight you in your court. We will win.”
And so this brings us back to Glastonbury. Kneecap’s actions saw British Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, demand that the Irish-language band not be allowed to perform at Glastonbury on the Saturday — but, thankfully, Glastonbury did not acquiesce to such pressures. In fact, the surge of public support for Kneecap meant that Glastonbury organisers actually had to move them to a larger stage to accommodate the increased crowd size — despite this, the BBC refused to stream their performance live. Not that Kneecap cared, as they still used their platform to recentre the Palestinian plight, in a typically audacious manner. In the highly politically charged environment that is 2025’s Glastonbury, and the current cultural moment, fans like myself were expecting The 1975, known for their own forms of politically outrageous protests at shows, to say or do something about Gaza. Their silence on the matter over the past 2 years could be excused given Healy’s lack of social media presence (he intermittently creates new Twitter accounts to keep in touch with fans, but seems to have resolved himself to not use social media at all after he threatened to slap Azaelia Banks on the platform in December of last year), and the band’s general lack of public appearances since the end of tour. It is clear that in November of 2023, Healy refused to comment on the genocide as he thought that it was pointless for artists, who were not experts, to express an opinion on such matters — a strange stance admittedly, given that he was more than happy to be outspoken when it came to LGBTQ issues and climate change, but not when it comes to a livestreamed child holocaust. But surely now, 2 years into the genocide, for their first public appearance as a band in 15 months, on the biggest stage they have ever performed, at a time when so many artists are speaking out about the atrocities the Israeli state are committing in Gaza, and given they were playing a festival where they knew Kneecap would be making such statements the very next day, Healy would have seen the imperative for artists to speak up, and would say or do something, right?
No one was necessarily expecting a Kneecap-level response — Healy walking on to the Pyramid stage waiving the Hezbollah flag, for instance. But at most a chant of Free Palestine before such politically-charged anthems as Love It If We Made It or People, and at least an appearance of the Palestinian flag projected somewhere on stage. But oh how misguided we were. Rather, what Healy greeted us with on Friday night was a capitulation: “People who are watching this may — I don’t know… They may be disappointed in the lack of politics in this show and our forthcoming shows and probably our future shows. I want you to know that it’s a conscious decision, we honestly don’t want our legacy to be one of politics. We want it to be that of love and friendship. I’m not trying to be too earnest, but you can go out into the world and there’s loads of politics everywhere. We don’t need more politics. We need more love and friendship. I know that’s really basic, but if you are a young kid and you are inspired by, like, this band or something like that — don’t aspire to play a stage or be a certain size. Aspire for this level of friendship and love in what you do and you’ll never fail. And I love you.”
When I heard Healy make this nauseatingly cringe, liberal happy-clappy, lovey-dovey bullshit speech, I turned the broadcast off — I didn’t need to hear anymore. Here was my hero, an artist whose work inspired me to be more politically active and conscious, whose discussion about the pop philosopher Mark Fisher with Joshua Citarella on his Doomscroll podcast last year inspired me to seek out Fisher’s writing, speaking to me directly, a young kid inspired by his band (for years on end they have ranked as my most streamed artist, and I have had the pleasure of seeing them perform live, once in Finsbury Park, a venue and slot Fontaines DC will now be headlining this summer, and subsequently in the O2 arena), and telling me he was capitulating to the power’s that be. Perhaps Healy was right: if you are inspired by his band, don’t aspire to play a stage or be a certain size, don’t aspire to headline Glastonbury, because, if you’re like Healy, the moment will go to your head and you’ll capitulate to capitalist realism, and the normalisation of genocide and fascism as he and his bandmates have.
Let’s not forget his response to the Malaysia incident. Healy remarked that if he had eliminated any routine part of their stage show to appease the Malaysian government’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws, that would have been a tacit endorsement of such laws. He agreed with the liberals that silence caused violence, and so he used his platform in that instance. And yet, here he is at Glastonbury, eliminating a routine part of The 1975’s live acts, namely moments of agitative propaganda and politically conscious commentary, to appease the British government’s anti-Palestinian stance, thereby tacitly endorsing not only the suppression of protestors for the Palestinian cause, but the genocide that the British government are enabling in the Gaza strip. In Dallas, he had said that artists who use their massive platforms to uphold their liberal virtues should be judged on the danger and inconvenience they face for doing so — by that metric we ought to commend Kneecap and Fontaines DC, who have been incredible in using their massive platforms to uphold their liberal virtues, at great danger to themselves, and denounce the 1975 who have chosen not to use their platform to uphold their liberal virtues, and who, on the contrary, have neglected their duty and responsibility so as to avoid any dangers or inconveniences that they may have faced for doing so. The dangerous precedent he pointed out, of artists catering to the local sensitivities of wherever they are invited to perform, is a precedent he has now set and acquiesced to — Healy won’t rock the boat, or offend the local sensitivities of Western imperialism and genocide harboured by the British and American governments, as long as you give him some air time on the BBC. Sure Matty, you’re right, there is nothing particularly stunning or brave about changing your profile picture whilst your sat in your house in LA, but there is also nothing stunning or brave about refusing to use the biggest platform you have ever had to shout out about an ongoing genocide: that’s not bravery, that’s cowardice.
Speaking out about an ongoing genocide is not political, it’s humane. Equally, love and friendship, and politics and speaking out about what’s right, are not mutually exclusive — leftist politics revolves around affirming the inherent worth of a single human life, it is, in this way, a love of life itself. To say that you are going to focus on one rather than the other, is to really say you are going to focus on neither.
As Healy’s Madison Square Garden comments from 2023 imply, he simply doesn’t think that artists have a duty and a responsibility to speak out against genocide. The implications being that artists are not sufficiently well-informed to adjudicate on matters such as a genocide. And sure, they aren’t, but we weren't expecting them to be. Once the ICJ said there were plausible grounds for a genocide in April of 2024, then there was certainly an expectation that those same artists who had been so outspoken about other global injustices, would keep that same energy for this one. After all, Healy had felt sufficiently well-informed enough to speak about climate change, to speak about immigration, to speak about abortion, to speak about women’s rights, to speak about LGBTQ+ rights, to speak about toxic masculinity and right-wing radicalisation. In fact, more than that, he passionately felt it was his duty as an artist to go to other countries, especially Eastern Muslim countries, and protest their anti-LGBTQ+ laws, but suddenly it isn’t his place as an artist to denounce a genocide which his country of origin, the UK, is literally enabling, funding, and supplying the arms for, or his current country of residence, America, who are doing the same, if not more so than Britain. And sure, I don’t expect all artists to say something. But I think artists that have previously given us the expectation of being outspoken about important political issues through their art, should not then abnegate that responsibility, and mock their fans for holding them to the high expectations and standards they themselves inculcated into their fanbase, which they are now abandoning. If Matty Healy didn’t want his band’s legacy to be political, and if he wanted to deny his responsibility to be outspoken when it matters most, i.e. a literal genocide, then he ought never to have written songs like Love It If We Made It, People, Loving Someone or The 1975 off Being Funny In A Foreign Language. He should never have been so outspoken in other countries about their political issues, he should never have included Greta Thunberg on the opener of his 2019 record, or appeared on Joshua Citarella’s podcast or done any number of other political actions. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, Matty. You can’t say that an artist’s responsibility is to be outspoken and to speak out against injustices they see in the world, no matter what consequences may befall them for using their platforms, and then say that that isn’t an artist’s responsibility when it would negatively effect you to do so.
If you do, then people will rightly call you a sellout — “A sellout is someone who becomes a hypocrite in the name of money,” sings Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC on their track Chequeless Reckless. “A phoney is someone who demands respect for the principles they affect”. Many have said, in the vein of Healy’s Madison Square Garden comments, ‘what would change if Matty said anything about Gaza?’ This is such a blackpill stance. First, if speaking out against an injustice doesn’t change anything, then why did Healy speak out about climate change, LGBTQ+ matters, and so on? Increasingly, the answer seems to be to win him some progressive brownie points, so as to better cater to a liberal and leftist audience of young listeners, rather than a genuine conviction in the social causes he espoused. Secondly, what we have seen over the last two years is a breakdown and degradation of all our international moral norms. So much money and resources have been put into our media to bring this about, the vast majority of our governments and our world leaders are trying to normalise and justify Israel’s criminal actions in Gaza, and so we all have a moral imperative to keep the norms we believe in alive, and say that what we are seeing is not normal. Under international law, a state’s formation and continued existence depends on its recognition by other states as a legitimate state— which, obviously and inherently, involves a process of normalisation. One such form of normalisation is cultural exchange such as the hosting of music festivals, and inviting Western artists to perform in the apartheid state like its any other country. Hence, many artists have in recent years agreed to a cultural boycott of Israel — they do not wish to profit off of apartheid, and in doing so, normalise it. And yet, in 2019, Healy displayed his ignorance, by declaring in an NME interview, amongst the discourse of cultural boycotts, that he “would go and play both places. Not because I’m taking a side but because there are young people there who are not representative of the government, and I believe that in countries that may be war-torn or separated due to political ideologies, the only thing that unifies people is culture and art. It’s more my job than anybody’s to go places like this, you know.” Thankfully, The 1975 have never played a show in Israel, and unfortunately, given the way things are going, will probably never be able to perform a show in the Palestinian Territories, but regardless, his actions in Malaysia 4 years later imply that he has perhaps put more thought into the matter — there, he was not willing to be used by the Malaysian government to normalise their anti-LGBTQ laws, even if it disappointed the young people there who were not representative of their government. The performance at Glastonbury, by contrast, represents another flip-flop — Healy is not just willing to perform a venue so as not to disappoint the young people who are not representative of their government, but he is also happy to concede and normalise whatever rules, regulations, and policies the government that is inviting him to perform stipulate, even if that policy is genocide and the accompanying suppression of voices against said genocide.
We each have to push against this normalisation in whatever way we can. As Kneecap member JJ O Dochartaigh’s T-shirt read at Glastonbury, we are all Palestine Action — we all have a responsibility to oppose this genocide in whatever ways we can. So, yes, even if most people know that what we are seeing is not normal, and you aren’t necessarily changing anyone’s mind in doing so, you still need to do so nevertheless — we need to keep the normative framework they are trying to destroy alive, and we need to destabilise the imperialist machine in whatever ways we can. People like you or me can only do so much — we are wage slaves, with very little leisure time to protest, and increasingly, the ways we can protest are getting criminalised. And yet, we still do — still, Palestine Action protestors destroy Elbit weapons factories, despite the consequences of long prison sentences. So the least that people like Matty Healy, privileged as they are with these extraordinary opportunities — the ears of millions of people, a headlining spot at the biggest festival in the UK broadcast live nationally — and armed with incredible resources to defend themselves against legal action, can do is speak up about a fucking ongoing genocide. Where is the Matty Healy who declared in 2019 that he “would go to jail for what I stand for, you know — I feel like I’m in one of the only punk bands in the world”? Mate, you weren’t even willing to, at worst, not have your headlining set of Glastonbury streamed live by the BBC, and at best, receive a fine from them, for speaking out against an ongoing genocide on the largest platform you have ever had — you aren’t a punk, you’re a coward. Why leave the responsibility to a smaller band like Kneecap, with less of a platform, and less resources to defend themselves than you? The more voices in the choir, the stronger the message. Kneecap and Fontaines DC, and others like them, are not doing what they are doing to virtue signal. It’s not because it’s fun or easy or safe. Hell, even if it doesn’t work, is it still not worth doing? They are doing what they do, speaking up about a genocide and raising awareness, because it’s right, because it’s decent, and above all, it’s kind — it’s better than the alternative, which is to stay publicly silent about genocide. Where is the Matty Healy who said “I’m never not going to stand up for women. I’m not going to not stand up for gay people. I’m not going to not stand up for minorities?” What about all the Palestinian women? What about all the gay Palestinians? Or did you actually mean that you were never not going to morally grandstand in Islamic countries, or America, to get yourself brownie points from your progressive fans?
Increasingly, artists want the best of both worlds — they want, or rather need, to be seen as political activists, so as to cater to the young progressive audience of the mainstream, but also want to lean into the hedonism of celebrity, thereby denying any political or social duty they have as artists. Healy has, in the aftermath of October 7th, and especially Glastonbury, shown himself to be one such artist, but for an example of another, look no further than 1975 collaborator Charli XCX, who headlined Glastonbury the night after The 1975, and who is married to the drummer of The 1975, George Daniel. Charli had the gall to say that her “music is not political”, despite using the hype around her Brat album last year to endorse Democratic presidential candidate and former vice-president Kamala Harris, tweeting “Kamala Is Brat”, thereby inherently tying her music to politics. In the same interview where Charli said her music is not political, she self-congratulatorily declared that she “was on the right side of democracy, the right side of women’s rights” and was “happy to help to prevent democracy from failing forever”. Sure Charli, you were really on the right side of history and of women’s rights when you endorsed a woman who was, at the time, enabling a genocide which has killed countless women and children. Plus, you didn’t even succeed in helping “to prevent democracy from failing forever”, not only because Trump won the election, but because an endorsement of Harris was not a proxy endorsement of democracy per se. Also, to say, as Charli did, that politics doesn’t feed into your art, is essentially tantamount to admitting that you are a privileged ignoramus who is incapable of seeing how politics might factor in to your lifestyle of endless partying and copious drug use without any sort of ramifications, legal or otherwise, which make up the majority of your artistic output. Sorry Charli, we aren’t all rich nepo babies who can be ‘bumping’ cocaine 365 days of the year without, at best, consequences on our careers, and at worst, legal action against us. Politics allows rich people like you to do that freely, and not us.
People have offered many excuses for Healy’s cowardice at Glasto. Some have suggested that, given only one song after his speech regarding the lack of politics at the show, he performed Love It If We Made It — the band’s most political song — that his statements oughtn't to be taken sincerely and seriously. In other words, it ought to be read and written off as a clever bit of self-aware trolling, as Healy is known to do, and as he had previously done that night, calling himself “the best songwriter” of his generation, and then proceeding to sing Chocolate, whilst projecting gibberish versions of the lyrics on stage. But I think we are giving The 1975 too much credit — instead, this speech reeked of a lack of self-awareness from a band typically so self-aware and self-referential that they are often described as meta.
Others have posited that this was perhaps even a workaround for the BBC’s impartiality restrictions — perhaps the band had to make a declaration that they were going to be apolitical, to be able to sneak in their political songs. But, if one looks into it, the worst that could have potentially happened, as mentioned previously, is that the BBC would refuse to stream the performance (which they would be unlikely to do, anyway, as it was the headlining performance of the first night of the Glastonbury Festival), or receive a fine of some sort. Either consequence would certainly have been worth the opportunity to speak out for the Palestinian cause — Healy and co. routinely get fined for smoking on stage, so this would be a far nobler thing to be fined for. And, in the unlikely case that the BBC did refuse to stream the show altogether, Healy would still have had the eyes and ears of 200,000 festivalgoers, and could also have co-operated with the Team75Live fan project, who have previously offered fan-to-fan streaming of the last 1975 tour, as a way to raise funds for the charity War Child who help children living in conflict areas. In fact, I have seen, in the aftermath of the Glasto incident, many people defend Healy’s silence on Palestine, by saying that he frequently donates to War Child — which I, frankly, find a ludicrous defence for his silence. Tying Healy to War Child is tenuous — Healy did not setup the Team75Live fan project. As it’s name implies, fans did. Fans did approach Healy and he collaborated with them to help raise funds by giving band memorabilia away in raffles, by providing the space for the fan-streaming of the project to happen, and so on, but this was not him directly donating to War Child of his own volition. Many fans, in defence of Healy, point out that we do not know how much he does off-stage — he could be donating to countless pro-Palestinian charities, War Child being just one of them. But as many Palestinians in Gaza have pointed out, though fundraising is certainly important and serves its place, now is not really the time for that — due to Israel’s illegal humanitarian blockade, any funds raised through organisations like War Child, which go towards buying and providing that aid, are essentially pointless. None of that aid is actually going anywhere, because there is no route for it to get in. Rather, Palestinians have by and large asked the world to keep talking publicly about the atrocities they are currently experiencing at the hands of Israel — something Healy, as a large artist with a large platform, routinely failed to do.
Still others have emphasised the toll that Healy’s previous forms of political activism have had on his mental health, implying that his volta on politics is an act of self-care rather than of cowardice, and ought to be wholeheartedly accepted by fans who have a parasocial connection with the artist and his wellbeing. And though I do have some sympathy for this view, Healy and co. have had 15 months to live and recover from the aftermath and backlash of their last shows, and equally, this is simply a one-off performance, with no tour announced, or any other shows scheduled for the foreseeable. It is more important than ever to use your platform to speak up for the oppressed. It couldn’t have been that emotionally or mentally draining to just say Free Palestine or display a Palestinian flag — at any rate, nowhere near as emotionally devastating as what Gazans have to go through daily at the hands of the Zionist entity. Plus, any backlash that came at Healy and the band in the aftermath of such an instance, would, if dealt with tactfully as Kneecap and others have done, not fall squarely on Healy’s shoulders, but would offer him an opportunity to recentre the Palestinian plight. So many fans have said that those who are critical or disappointed with Healy’s lack of a backbone need to lighten up and just have fun with the band on what was sure to be a big night for them — as if Healy himself hadn’t discouraged an embracing of hedonism on People, and hadn’t warned us against “Celebrities lacking in integrity” on Loving Someone. Where is the Healy who denounced celebrities and politicians who “upheld the status quo, instead of showing the kids that they matter”, who ordered said politicians to “stop fucking with the kids”? How does a genocide make a child victim on the receiving end feel? I’d hazard a guess that they feel they don’t matter — that if they did, this genocide would never have happened, and that we would have stopped already, that big artists like Healy would have spoken up and done more. Nothing fucks with a kids life and sense of their own importance than being the victim of a genocide — seeing their whole family wiped out before them in the most cruel and vicious ways imaginable. Where is the sense of urgency?
And, frankly, in light of all this, it made me reflect on The 1975’s music itself. Healy’s comments and behaviour on Friday night cut a Gordian knot for me that I have had for a long time. On Doomscroll, Healy spoke passionately about Fisher and his analysis of cultural production under capitalism — Healy seemingly agreed with Fisher that, in the face of the stagnating material conditions of neoliberalism, it is important we innovate in art and culture, forever striving to create the new. That art and culture is important not just as a consolation, but actually as a vector for imagining an alternative reality outside of the strictures of capitalism. However, as many have pointed out, with the exception of A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships and Notes On A Conditional Form, most of The 1975’s music has catered to the mainstream, has leaned heavily into nostalgic 80s sounds, and has, for the most part, just been bog-standard, radio-friendly pop music — good pop music, don’t get me wrong, but rarely ever avant-garde, or pushing the envelope and the medium of music in a new direction.
I was able to live with this though — the music is good, and even though they are a pop band, they always had a punk-rock attitude. As an art pop outfit, in the vein of Japan before them, The 1975 used these accessible sounds as a format for their scathing cultural critiques, or to direct listeners to intellectual topics and scholars. For instance, on Loving Someone, Healy has a blink and you’ll miss it joke, where he sings “Even Guy Debord needed spectacles, you see”, or the line off the sound where Healy remarks that “there’s so much skin to see // A simple Epicurean philosophy”. But now with the band resolving themselves to leave politics behind, and with Healy’s backbone apparently gone, it retrospectively feels as if Healy and co. refused to stick true to their future forward ideals of innovation in music, not because they are incapable of doing so, they are, after all, evidently talented musicians, but because they are unwilling to sacrifice their commercial success for true innovation – they care more about radio plays and appealing to a mass audience, than truly being vectors for the new. In light of this and the Glasto incident, I wonder what is really keeping me attached to this band — their political bent was, for me, what separated them from other pop acts in a similar vein to them, such as Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter, for instance. With that gone, what do they have left other than catchy-earworms like Chocolate or Somebody Else? Nothing of substance accept the cheap dreams of love songs?
In this instance, I think Occam’s Razor applies — the most straightforward answer is often the right one. We ought to take Healy at face value — when it mattered most, when he had the biggest platformer he ever had, he and his band decided to do and say nothing about an ongoing genocide, and did so as to not rock the boat, to not ruffle any feathers, to not lose the BBC streaming the performance or receive any sanctions. Call it whatever you like, come up with whatever excuses fit in to your parasocial narrative, but in my book that is cowardice. To quote Omar El Akkad, “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” Matty Healy and The 1975 are on the wrong side of history.
