Rina Sawayama has called out her labelmate and lead singer of The 1975, Matty Healy, for comments he made during a podcast back in February.
During her performance at the Glastonbury Festival in England, the pop singer introduced her song "STFU!" with an introduction that viciously took aim at Healy. She didn't mention Healy by name, but Sawayama clearly described who she was talking about.
"I wrote this because I was sick & tired of these micro-aggressions," she said. "This goes out to a white man that watches Ghetto Gaggers and mocks Asian people on a podcast. He also owns my masters! I've had enough!"
The crowd erupted, and the 32-year-old delivered a moving performance of the song off her 2020 album Sawayama. The references to the pornographic series Ghetto Gaggers and making fun of Asians stem from Healy's appearance on an episode of The Adam Friedland Show in February, where he made jokes about watching the adult site.
He also teamed up with the podcast hosts and made fun of several Asian accents and Ice Spice. Healy can be heard laughing along with the jokes during the podcast, and he's been getting a lot of heat for his behavior.
Sawayama didn't make it clear what she meant by Matty Healy owning her masters as she and The 1975 are signed to Dirty Hit, a British independent record label. The label was founded by Jamie Oborne, Chuck Waite, Brian Smith, and former England soccer player Ugo Ehiogu.
Matty Healy responded to the backlash during an interview with The New Yorker and explained he might have baited his fans "a little bit" with the appearance.
"But it doesn't actually matter," he said. "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."
He then said if people are really upset by his remarks or association with some more problematic figures, the finger should be pointed at them.
"If it does," he said, "you're either deluded or you are, sorry, a liar. You're either lying that you are hurt, or you're a bit mental for being hurt. It's just people going, 'Oh, there's a bad thing over there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am.' And I kind of want them to do that, because they're demonstrating something so base level."
