The death of George Floyd has dominated the news cycle over the past few days. Famous figures have offered their reactions to the incident, and that includes The 1975 frontperson Matty Healy, who has often spoken up about societal issues. This time, though, Healy’s comments were met with a not-so-positive reaction.
As Metro notes, Healy took to Twitter and, in what seemed to be a reaction to Floyd’s death, wrote, “If you truly believe that ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ you need to stop facilitating the end of black ones.” At the end of that tweet, Healy included a YouTube link to The 1975’s song “Love It If We Made It.” That’s the part that earned Healy some backlash, as he was accused of using the situation to promote The 1975’s music.
The tweet has since been deleted, and in another tweet that is also no longer available, Healy explained why he included the song in his tweet, writing, “Sorry I did not link my song in that tweet to make it about me it’s just that the song is literally about this disgusting situation and speaks more eloquently than I can on Twitter.’
The song features the lyrics, “We’re f*cking in a car, shooting heroin / Saying controversial things just for the hell of it / Selling melanin and then suffocate the black men / Start with misdemeanors and we’ll make a business out of them.”
Following that tweet, Healy apparently tweeted his original message again and then shared “Love It If We Made It” separately. After that, Healy deactivated his Twitter account (@truman_black), and as of this post, it is still not accessible.
Healy’s tweeting activity drew some outraged reactions from Twitter users. One wrote, “Matty healy a white male promoting his own work to profit off a movement about black people is not defendable and if you are white and defending him you have no argument in the situation it’s really that simple.” Another tweeted, “matty healy constantly speaks up about how he struggles as a white man in the industry and how his band is at a disadvantage cause they aren’t the typical pop band but his response to a black man being murdered is a link to his song??? fvck him #BlackLivesMatter.”
That said, Healy also had some users come to his defense, with one writing, “all youse non 1975 fans go listen to the song, you will realise that it’s about raising awareness, about racism and other topics. so mabye stop tryna cancel matty healy. he wasent using it to promote his own music. he was doing it to raise awareness.”
Find some more reactions to Healy’s tweets below.
https://twitter.com/taylucifer666/status/1266006901025898504
https://twitter.com/callumismynamee/status/1266004131149426689
https://twitter.com/ghoulets/status/1265999946601451521
https://twitter.com/lgbtfineline/status/1265995176222134272
https://twitter.com/kimchrstina/status/1266002025243914240
https://twitter.com/yeah1kn0walex/status/1266005831201456130
https://twitter.com/AlfieBarrishi/status/1266026719678529542
https://twitter.com/jackiekreutz/status/1266063504202772483
