Rina Sawayama had some choice words for her labelmate Matty Healy of The 1975.
During her performance at the Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts, Sawayama, 32, said her song “STFU!” was inspired by being “sick and tired of microaggressions“She is confronted by some people from her label.
“So tonight this song is for a white man watching (white men degrading black women in porn) and making fun of Asian people on a podcast,” Sawayama said, referring to Healy’s controversial comments on “The Adam Friedland Show” in February.
The Japanese-British singer added, “He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough.”
Sawayama and Healy are both signed to the Dirty Hit label, run by the band’s 1975s manager, Jamie Oborne. Healy previously served as director of Dirty Hit from December 2018 to April this year.
USA TODAY contacted representatives of Sawayama and Dirty Hit.
Why is Matty Healy controversial?
In February, Healy came under fire for his appearance on “The Adam Friedland Show” podcast, during which hosts Friedland and Nick Mullen mocked rapper Ice Spice, making derogatory comments about his body and ethnicity. Later in the episode, Healy asked the hosts about their impressions of Japanese people working in concentration camps.
The 1975 musician also said he had a preference for a category of pornography in which black women are specifically degraded by white men.
Representatives for Healy and Ice Spice did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.
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What did Healy say about the controversy?
Healy issued an apology to Ice Spice while performing on stage in Auckland, New Zealand, according to a fan video of his comments posted on Twitter end of April.
“Just because I’m annoyed doesn’t mean my joke was misinterpreted. It’s because I don’t want Ice Spice to think I’m (bad),” he said. “I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry. I don’t want something like this to be misconstrued as mean.”
He continued, “I’m so sorry if I upset her because I (expletive) love her.”
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In a New Yorker profile, published June 5, Healy played down the podcast controversy.
“It doesn’t really matter,” he said. “Nobody’s sitting there at night slumped in front of their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and says, ‘What’s wrong, honey?’ and they say, “It’s just that thing with Matty Healy.” It doesn’t happen.
“If so,” he continued, “either you’re deceived or you’re, sorry, a liar. Either you lie saying you’re hurt, or you’re a little crazy for being It’s just people going, “Oh, there’s a bad thing out there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am.” somehow they’re doing that, because they’re demonstrating something so basic.”
Contributors: Patrick Ryan and Edward Segarra
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rina Sawayama slams label mate Matty Healy over podcast comments