Credit: Samuel Bradley

Malaysian festival submits seven-figure lawsuit against The 1975 following on-stage kiss

Tue 30 July 2024 18:09, UK

Malaysia’s Good Vibes Festival has filed a £1.9 million lawsuit against The 1975 after frontman Matty Healy kissed bandmate Ross MacDonald during their headline set in 2023.

Homosexuality is illegal in the Asian country, and in the middle of their performance, Healy and MacDonald protested against Malaysia’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation by embracing. Before the act, the singer told the crowd: “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.”

As a result, the band’s set was cut short, and the rest of the festival was cancelled. Future Sound Asia, the company behind the Good Vibes festival, have now filed a lawsuit in the UK High Court, and are demanding almost £2million in damages, according to Variety.

In the legal document, Future Sound Asia states that the band previously played the same event in 2016 and claims The 1975 had been informed on several occasions about the local laws prior to their most recent performance. In addition to the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, artists are also not allowed to swear, smoke and drink on-stage. Undressing, and talking about politics or religion is also prohibited.

The lawsuit says The 1975 were paid $350,000 to appear at Good Vibes Festival, and organisers were granted special dispensation to allow them to perform by local authorities due to Healy’s admittance about past drug use. However, they claim this was made on the condition he would follow “all local guidelines and regulations”.

Furthermore, they allege that the night before the performance, The 1975 decided they “should not perform at the music festival” before coming up with a plan to disrupt the event. They accuse the band of playing “a completely different setlist” and “act in way that were intended to breach the Guidelines”, such as a “provocative speech” from Healy. They also described his kiss with MacDonald as a “long pretend passionate embrace” which was made “with the intention of causing offence and breaching the regulations and the terms of the agreement”.

Despite alcohol being prohibited for performers, they claim The 1975 snuck a bottle of wine onto the stage for Healy and accused the singer of acting “in a drunken way”. The lawsuit also says he appeared “to vomit on the stage and/or grunt and spit excessively including towards the audience” and delivered a “profanity-laden speech”.

In October, Healy delivered a ten-minute speech relating to the incident during the band’s show in Fort Worth, Texas. In his monologue, The 1975 frontman hit out at “liberal outrage” regarding the backlash to the kiss and name-checked The Strokes singer Julian Casablancas, who condemned Healy breaking Malaysian laws. The Strokes were also set to play Good Vibes Festival, but their performance was cancelled as a result of the event losing its licence.

Healy told the crowd: “It was the liberal outrage against our band for remaining consistent with our pro-LGBTQ stage show which was the most puzzling thing. Lots of people, who appear to be liberal people, contended that the performance was an insensitive display of hostility against the cultural customs of the Malaysian government and that the kiss was a performative gesture of allyship.”

“To call the 1975’s performance colonialism is a complete inversion of the word’s meaning… We have no [power] at all to enforce will on anyone in Malaysia. In fact, it was the Malaysian authorities who briefly imprisoned us,” Healy added.

The 1975 are yet to comment on the lawsuit.