Malaysian music festival shut down by government after Matty Healy kisses male bandmate on stage
Malaysia's Good Vibes Festival was shut down after a very truncated set—and one illegal-by-local-laws kiss— by Matty Healy and The 1975
Aux News Matty Healy
Malaysia’s Good Vibes Festival came to an abrupt, unexpected, and decidedly un-good-vibes-ish halt this weekend, after organizers shut the last two days of the festival down, apparently in response to an incident involving Matty Healy and Ross MacDonald of The 1975. Healy—who was vocally angry about being booked at the festival, after he and his bandmates were informed that homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia—gave a speech to the audience in which he said “Unfortunately, you don’t get a set of loads of uplifting songs because I’m fucking furious,” before kissing MacDonald on stage. The set was canceled shortly afterwards, with Consequence reporting that organizers also opted to cancel the entire rest of the festival—slated to run through Saturday and Sunday, with headlining performances from The Strokes and The Kid Laroi.
Festival organizers issued a statement this weekend, saying, “Prior to the festival, The 1975 management team reassured us that Healy and the band would adhere to local performance guidelines. Regrettably, Healy did not honor these assurances, despite our trust in their commitment. Healy’s actions took us by complete surprise, and we halted the show as promptly as feasible following the incident.” They also announced that they had been issued a directive to shut down from the country’s Ministry Of Communications And Digital.
Malaysia is one of the most restrictive countries on the planet in terms of LGBTQ+ rights; same-sex sexual acts can be punished with up to 20 years in prison, plus canings, fines, or deportations. Addressing the crowd on Friday, Healy stated that he and the band had “made a mistake” by agreeing to play the festival, saying, in a long-ish rant,
When we were booking shows, I wasn’t looking into it. I don’t see the fucking point, right? I do not see the point of inviting The 1975 to a country and then telling us who we can have sex with. I’m sorry if that offends you, and you’re religious, and it’s part of your fucking government… I don’t care anymore. If you push, I’m gonna push back. I’m not in the fucking mood.
Unfortunately, you don’t get a set of loads of uplifting songs because I’m fucking furious. And that’s not fair on you, because you’re not representative of your government. Cause you are young people, and I’m sure a lot of you are gay and progressive. It’s ridiculous, fucking ridiculous, to tell people what they can do with that and that. If you want to invite me here to do a show, you can fuck off. I’ll take your money. You can ban me, but I’ve done this before, and it doesn’t feel good.
Healy is receiving criticism for his actions on social media; several people have accused him of adopting a “white savior” complex, and potentially inciting reprisals from conservative elements in the country’s government that will land on LGBTQ+ people living in Malaysia, rather than members of the band—who reportedly vacated the country not long after the show.
36 Comments
no criticism here. the promoters hired outspoken people to perform, and then acted surprised when they spoke out.
It is an absolute asshole move to pull a grandstanding stunt like this and fly back home when you know you won’t have to bear the consequences of it
Sexually questionable rockery? Why I never.
A-wop-bop-a-lu-bop…
An old fashioned “no matter who wins, we all lose” debacle. By gum, it’s been a while!
gosh, i wonder where malaysia got their anti-LGBTQ laws from?such a mystery.
I assume Russia.
They kicked the British out over 60 years ago.
60 years is not a long time, especially in post-colonial terms.
also, i don’t know about malaysia specifically, but many former british colonies have a savings law clause, which makes it difficult to change colonial-era laws.
Gay marriage is legal in Britain. Any indication Malaysia wants this?
and how long was britain a colony?
With Britain itself improved so much on gay rights I don’t see why that’s a factor.
Yeah, they don’t really like that over there.
What? Mediocre pop rock?
Good for them, finding a way to get attention for a band I’ve never heard of.
I am amazed that the AVclub managed to write this entire article without writing the words islam or muslim. Replacing it by “conservative”.
Also a nice note that you end up pushing the narrative that the gay dude is the bad guy here, just after you wrote : “Malaysia is one of the most restrictive countries on the planet in terms of LGBTQ+ rights; same-sex sexual acts can be punished with up to 20 years in prison, plus canings, fines, or deportations.”
Amazing that this article both failed at representing the truth, and also failed at defending the progressists values that Kinja seems to care so much for (clicks).
Note: I will not address any writer on kinja individually anymore, as it seems they’re just writing with a corporate leftist gun held to their head. They might be all be fake names at this point and it’s just one guy using chatgpt.
WaNnA cOmE hAnG out At My AnGrY bOyS cLuB fOr AnGrY bOyS? We can discuss about how we don’t have sex
Do Do… Do you think Islamic nations are “leftist?”
Do you not realize they’re conservative? Are you so obsessed with the politics of your own nation that you can only view the wider world through that lens?What a small and pitiful existence. And, through it all, your screed somehow makes you out as a victim.
I mean, to be fair, the right tries to toss “muslim” or “islamic” as a pejorative into any situation possible and the left sometimes tries just as hard to avoid it. I think if this had happened with, say, a festival in Belarus shut down by some Eastern Orthodox church, there would have been mention made of the religious motivation and probably some criticism of theocratic government.
Now, I think there’s a compelling argument to avoid mentioning Islam when it comes to this kind of stuff because it would be irresponsible to contribute to Islamophobia, which is rampant in swaths of the country. But people notice the double-standard. If you just try to wave it away or claim that anyone pointing this out is doing so in bad faith, I think you lose some credibility.
I don’t agree with the argument to avoid. There is no islamophobia anymore, it is an issue of culture difference. We don’t agree on a lot of issues, and that’s fine.
But western countries made their choices on homosexuality, to back away from it because we don’t want to offend muslim people is to me both hypocrite and dangerous.
It’s for the muslim people who move here to adapt and accept the values of the countries they are living into.
And it would be the same from someone from a western country who moves to an islamic country. You’re not here to impose your values, you’re here to integrate. Otherwise you place yourself in a position where you will always be a marginal member of the society.
We can both respect the decision of the Malaysian government ( which I didn’t criticize, they stopped the festival, they sent back the artists. Alright, it’s fair) and also not omit why they reacted this way.
“There is no islamophobia anymore” : This is just not true. I’m from a small town in the midwest and it’s not hard for me to think of instances of people saying pretty ignorant shit about muslims or Islam. You realize the panic about “Sharia courts” in American cities IS itself islamophobia, don’t you? That’s, like, not a thing.
“It’s for the muslim people who move here to adapt and accept the values of the countries they are living into” : what does this have to do with Malaysia? Think about why a story about something happening on the other side of the planet is triggering you to complain about immigrants who are a different religion than you.“We can both respect the decision of the Malaysian government” : fuck that, I don’t respect it at all.
Where did I say that?
It’s pretty obvious that avoiding to mention the islamic culture and religion in this article is because kinja doesn’t want to be labeled as bigots for pointing it out.
Can’t you see that? Or do you think there is another reason for not mentioning that, when Malaysia is 64% muslim and that it is more and more controlled by muslim politicians.
Nowhere I actually talked about Malaysia, or said Malaysia should be more like western countries.
But I would think Kinja, a western media shouldn’t shy away from the truth and write the article from the point of view of our culture. Instead they basically jumped through hoops to omit a really big piece of information and then threw the singer under the bus at the end.
I don’t like biased reporting, whether it’s right wing or left wing, lying by omission shouldn’t be ok when it’s about reporting the news.
It would be nice to have journalists and articles that aren’t politically biased towards a left or right agenda. That’s what I’m saying here.
Considering the anti-gay laws on the books in Malaysia are colonial era laws put there by “good” British Christians I am not sure your point.
And 60 years later they are still here, and it has nothing to do with christians or the british government.You’re just deflecting, they’re an independant country, they’re responsible for their own choices…
It’s basically like saying that a 40 yo stealing is not responsible because 35 years ago his father told him that it was ok to steal. Colonialism is over, west daddy isn’t there anymore.
I’m assuming you spend time on other sites besides ones that aren’t Kinja-related, so I’m curious: does anyone buy it when you say you’re not interested in left or right wing bias? That shit was transparent as fuck like a decade ago.
Congrats you made it weird
I’d agree that they should have pointed out that these laws are at least ostensibly based on religion. It’s clear that a christian based government would do much the same, given the chance. Fortunately, people are beginning to realize that these days “conservative” is “religious fanatic” without the courage of their convictions (without courage, full stop, really).
I guess for me it’s about hypocrisy. I understand that different people have different values and beliefs, but this is journalism.
I’m Malaysian. What this article failed to mention is that prior to the kiss, Matty Healy was visibly intoxicated, destroyed a drone belonging to the festival organizers, spat all over the stage (which other bands were supposed to use after his set), and went on a long ramble about the angry reaction to a Tiktok he posted that the crowd had no idea about.Also he’s not gay.Like any other country with millions of people in it, Malaysia has LGBTQ folks. Some of them are even Muslim. They have to live under this repressive homophobic government, you don’t. So kindly take my country out of your fucking mouth.
Well all of that is fair, all these info should have been part of the article if Kinja had done it’s work.
If you don’t want to talk about these issues because you live in a repressive homophobic country, I don’t think telling everybody else to not f*cking talk about your country will help with the change you seem to desperately want for your country.
Change don’t happen when people just keep silent.So sorry, with all respect, I’ll talk about any country, religion or politics. Because I want to and because I can, and because I think discussing issues instead of censoring people who think differently is the best way to reach common grounds.
You took issue with this article for not being supportive of an artist whose drunken performative activism made life more difficult for the people he claimed to speak for.That’s what you don’t seem to understand. You can talk about us all you want from your privileged little corner of the world, but you’re an idiot if you think that “helps” gay people here or anywhere else. You want to help, look for actual Malaysian LGBTQ activist groups here and donate some money. Five of your US dollars can buy 4 meals here. Then again, you also said western people who come here should adapt to the homophobic environment. So I don’t think you’re one to preach morality to anyone.
Look homosexuality really bums some people out okay. How could those performers possibly bring themselves to perform for the next two days under these conditions. The poor Malaysia eyeballs.
What happened to the days when musicians didn’t have politics and just wanted to entertain?!?! /s
On the one hand, fuck this guy for his various gross behaviors. On the other hand, this is extremely funny and kudos to him for shutting this shit down (the ol’ “we want to profit from the value you people contribute to society but not actually respect or protect your innate humanity”). On the other other hand, fuck this shitty band and fuck the Strokes too for signing up for this in the first place. Little late by the time you’re ON STAGE to totally convince us you give a shit.
Strong disagree on the little late after taking the stage argument. I’d say taking the gig and then immediately blowing up their spot takes .ich more courage, draws much more attention and does a lot more to let the local LGBT community to know they’re supported than just refusing to go in the first place.