Matty Healy Pledges to ‘Do Better’ and Asks Crowd to Applaud His Apology

Is it possible for Matty Healy to take an L and not wax poetic about it? Lately, I’m thinking it’s a no, and I have to be honest: I feel kind of sorry for him. He must be exhausted from constantly looking up big words to use in the dictionary.

On Monday night, the beleaguered (his own doing) frontman of The 1975 apologized once again for his shitty behavior of late (the last five years) while the band played the Hollywood Bowl.

“Because some of my actions have hurt some people, I apologize to those people, and I pledge to do better moving forward,” Healy told the crowd. If that sounds like it had shades of sincerity, he then proceeded to encourage the audience to celebrate his atonement. “Give it up for the old apology,” he said to laughs. Because it’s Healy, his speech then got even more self-congratulatory.

“You see, as an artist, I want to create an environment for myself to perform where not everything that I do is taken literally…like, for example, I’m on stage right now, but I don’t do this in my normal life…I don’t go around singing my songs and apologizing.” So, let me get this straight: Nothing Healy does on stage—including an apparent attempt to apologize for racist and misogynistic comments—should be taken literally? Got it!

“I’ve kind of performed exaggerated versions of myself on other stages, be it print or on podcasts and in an often misguided attempt at fulfilling the kind of character role of the 21st-century rock star, so, it’s complicated,” Healy droned on. “Sometimes playing pretend is the only way you can truly find out who you are, and you could probably also say that men would rather do offensive impressions for attention than go to therapy.” Apparently, men would also rather justify said impressions with lame excuses for a captive audience than go to therapy too, but we already knew that!

“But, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to better yourself, sometimes that just requires people who really know what they’re talking about,” Healy continued before jokingly reading a BetterHelp ad, the digital mental health platform, off of cue cards.

Healy’s speech—just days after he announced the band will soon take an “indefinite hiatus”—arrives hot on the heels of Ice Spice’s response to Healy’s comments about her on The Adam Friedland Show. In case you’d forgotten, Healy called the rapper a “chubby Chinese lady” and mocked both a Chinese and Inuit accent on the podcast. (Healy later clarified that the hiatus was just a break at the end of their Still… At Their Very Best tour and not a breakup.)

“First of all, I’m thick. What do you mean Chinese? What?” Ice Spice recently remarked to Variety. “But then they apologized or whatever. And the whole time, I didn’t really care.”

As ever, I’m with Ice Spice. When it comes to Healy, perhaps we should all really care a little less.

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