FORT WORTH, Texas – British pop-rock band The 1975 were “briefly imprisoned” in Malaysia, after frontman Matty Healy criticised the country’s anti-LGBTQ laws and kissed a bandmate onstage at a music festival in Kuala Lumpur in July.
He made this claim during a 10-minute speech at their performance in Fort Worth, Texas, on Tuesday night. A video of the speech was posted on the band’s X account.
In July, Malaysian authorities cancelled the three-day Good Vibes Festival (GVF) featuring the band and other performers, after Healy criticised the government for criminalising same-sex relationships and kissed bassist Ross MacDonald onstage.
The 1975 were banned from performing in Malaysia and they cancelled subsequent concerts in Taiwan and Indonesia.
In his speech in Fort Worth, Healy addressed the “liberal outrage” against the band.
He said that many 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”.
To call the band’s performance colonialism is a complete inversion of the word’s meaning, he said. “We have no (power) at all to enforce will on anyone in Malaysia. In fact, it was the Malaysian authorities who briefly imprisoned us.”
Healy added that the band “were invited to headline a festival by a government who had full knowledge of the band with its well-publicised political views and its routine stage show”.
“Malaysian festival organisers’ familiarity with the band was the basis of our invitation.”
He said the kiss was “not a stunt simply meant to provoke the government”. “It was an ongoing part of The 1975 stage show, which has been performed many times prior.”
To eliminate any routine part of the show to appease the Malaysian authorities’ view of the LGBTQ community would be “a passive endorsement of those politics”, he added.
Homosexuality is forbidden in Malaysia, and laws criminalising sodomy can result in imprisonment or corporal punishment.
In July, Malaysia’s Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil said he ordered the immediate cancellation of the rest of the festival, with organisers asked to compensate those who had bought tickets.
“I want to stress the position of the unity government is very clear. There is no compromise against any party that challenges, disparages and violates Malaysian laws,” he said in a post on X.
Healy said during the band’s gig in Hawaii in August that he feared jail time in Malaysia, referring to the controversy.
In Fort Worth on Tuesday, he said it “should be expected” that if organisers “invite dozens of Western performers into your country, they’ll bring their Western values with them”.
“If the very same things which made you aware of them could land them in jail in your country, you’re not actually inviting them to perform. You’re indirectly commanding them to reflect your country’s policies by omission,” he added.
The band are being sued by Future Sound Asia (FSA), organiser of GVF, which is demanding them to pay more than £2 million (S$3.6 million) in damages after the music festival was cancelled abruptly, following the controversial gig.
Earlier in July, the band held two sold-out concerts in Singapore at the Sands Expo & Convention Centre, having previously played here in 2014, 2016 and 2019.
In September, Healy announced they will go on an “indefinite hiatus” when their Still...At Their Very Best world tour wraps up in March 2024 in Amsterdam, but he clarified later they were not “splitting up”.
