Malaysia decide against banning international concerts after The 1975 controversy
In July, The 1975 found themselves at the centre of controversy after Matty Healy criticised Malaysia’s LGBTQ+ laws on stage before kissing his male bandmate, resulting in their ban from the country.
Following the incident, the Malaysian government debated whether or not to ban international artists from performing in their country. While a “kill switch” has been implemented, allowing performances to be ended immediately if they break guidelines, the notion of banning international artists has been scrapped.
Teo Nie Ching, Malaysia’s deputy communications and digital minister, said, “The 1975 flouted several guidelines and we are in the midst of strengthening the guidelines to avoid reoccurrence. Just because of one incident, how can we cancel the others? Out of 296 artists, only one happened. How is this fair?”
The 1975’s incident took place at Kuala Lumpur’s Good Vibrations Festival, with Healy and bassist Ross MacDonald sharing a kiss despite the fact that homosexual activity is illegal in Malaysia.
Healy said to the audience, “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.”
He added, “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. You are young people, and I’m sure a lot of you are gay and progressive.”
The singer later revealed that he thought he was going to go to prison following the controversy. At a show in Hawaii in August, Healy said: “All I’ll say is that I don’t give a fuck about any white saviour complex bullshit. What I’ll say is that doing the right thing often requires quite a lot of sacrifice and very little reward.”
The frontman continued: “And being seen to do the right thing requires very little sacrifice, and that’s when you get all the rewards. And me and Ross [MacDonald] nearly shaved our heads because we thought we were going to prison for being f*gs.”
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