The 1975‘s Matty Healy has opened up in a new interview about his departure from Twitter.
The frontman deactivated his account on the social media platform in 2020 after being criticised for sharing a post about George Floyd that included a link to the band’s single ‘Love It If We Made It’.
Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American, died in the custody of local police in Minnesota in May that year. Footage subsequently emerged of an officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on Floyd’s neck.
His death sparked international outrage, protests and a renewed focus on the Black Lives Matter movement. Last year, Chauvin was sentenced to 22-and-a-half years in prison having been convicted of second-degree murder.
Responding to Floyd’s death, Healy tweeted: “If you truly believe that ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ you need to stop facilitating the end of black ones.” His message was accompanied by a link to the aforementioned politically-charged track, which includes the line: “Selling melanin and then suffocate the Black men.”
The singer later apologised, writing: “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.” He then deleted his account.
During a new interview with Pitchfork, Healy explained: “I didn’t run away from Twitter. I was just like, ‘You know what? If I want to write about the culture war, I don’t wanna be a pawn in it anymore’.”
He also said in the conversation that “people took shit seriously before Twitter”.
Healy continued: “We used to want our artists to be cigarette-smoking bohemian outsiders who were gonna take risks that the rest of us wouldn’t. Now there’s this desire, especially online, for them to be liberal academics.”
Speaking about how the process of working on new music compares to his approach to social media, he said: “I’ve thought about every single word on this album [‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’] for two years; I’d think about a tweet for 20 seconds.
“My album’s gonna go out to, what, 10 million people, but a tweet could go out to a billion. The maths doesn’t work out. I’ll die on the hill of my records, but I won’t die on the hill of my tweets. It’s better to say good things less than to say average things more.”
According to a post on Reddit, Healy recently returned to Twitter under the handle @MatthewTHealy. The bio on his apparent new profile reads: “It’s gonna be fine.”
Last Saturday (August 6), Healy tweeted to say that he was back on the platform for “a few weeks” as “a little treat”. He has not posted again since.
The frontman recently made a rare appearance on Reddit to share some details about The 1975’s fifth studio album, which is due for release on October 14 via Dirty Hit.
Healy and co. have already previewed ‘Being Funny…’ with the singles ‘Part Of The Band’ and ‘Happiness’. While releasing the latter, the Manchester group announced a North American headline tour for this November/December.
Elsewhere in his chat with Pitchfork, Matty Healy revealed Taylor Swift’s reaction to The 1975’s forthcoming new record.
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