Matt Healy, the lead singer of British pop rock band, The 1975, has come under fire for a recent exploitative tweet regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. As protests against the police killing of George Floyd persist across the country, many have spoken out on the issues of police brutality and racism against Black people. Matt was among those people to voice their opinions, but he may have gone about it the wrong way.
On Thursday (May 28th), Matt posted a tweet that read, "If you truly believe that ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ you need to stop facilitating the end of black ones." While this sentiment did not spark outrage, the rest of the tweet certainly did. Matt proceeded to link the music video to his band's song, "Love It If We Made It." Many accused him of acting tasteless by co-opting an important movement to promote his own 2-year-old song.
He later deleted the tweet amid backlash, but reposted the link to the song once again in a new tweet that reportedly read: "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." Some of the lyrics in the song that he might have been referring to include the following: "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."
Soon after posting this more recent tweet, he deactivated his account altogether. He began trending on Twitter as users expressed how appalled they were by his actions.
https://twitter.com/_/status/1265999946601451521
https://twitter.com/_/status/1265998602469543937
https://twitter.com/_/status/1266013425643196416