Matty Healy won’t win any awards for being congenial. Noel Gallagher thinks The 1975 frontman is a ‘f*cking slack-jawed f*ckwit.’ But his list of detractors doesn’t stop there. Thanks in part to his rumored relationship with Taylor Swift, the Swifties also has it out for him. Now, Healy is responding to the public’s opinion on him and his recent podcast controversy.
In an interview with the New Yorker, Healy stated, “We used to expect our artists to be cigarette-smoking bohemian outsiders, and now we expect them to be liberal academics.”
When asked if he “Baited his fans on purpose,” the musician said, “A little bit. But it doesn’t actually matter. 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.”
When journalist Jia Tolentino pushed back, he continued, “If it does, 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.”
In February, his initial remarks included derogatory comments about women, rapper Ice Spice, and his opinion that Harry Styles “gets a pass” for “queer-baiting.”