Sometimes you just want to tell that person in your life who’s a total piece of sh*t to shut the f*ck up, and now singer Rina Sawayama has done that for millions of fans.
The Japanese/British singer took the stage at Glastonbury yesterday and had a strong message for the person who owns her masters. That person turned out to be none other than Matty Healy, front man for the band The 1975 and revealed racist bigot.
This call-out may be out of nowhere for some, but for Sawayama, this was a long time coming.
Rina Sawayama tells Matt Healy to shut the f*ck up
Sawayama took the stage during the 2023 Glastonbury Festival, which is a music festival which takes place near Somerset, England. While on stage, she seemed to have a specific message for one person who was causing her strife, stating, “So, tonight, this song goes out to a white man who watches Ghetto Gaggers and mocks Asian people on a podcast. He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough.”
While some fans were confused to who she was talking about, it soon became clear that Sawayama was referring to Matty Healy, who apparently owns the master recordings of Sawayama’s songs.
Fans may wonder how Healy may own Sawayama’s masters and that’s because Healy was once on the board of directors for Dirty Hit Limited, the private limited company behind the independent British record label Dirty Hit, where Sawayama and the 1975 are signed as artists, but his position was terminated on April 4, 2023.
Though Dirty Hit Limited and the 1975 have yet to comment on why Healy left the board of directors, it could be because of the fire he was under early this year when Healy was criticized for harmful appearances on the podcast The Adam Friedland Show, where he admitted to watching pornography in which Black women are degraded and subjugated by white men and laughed as the podcast hosts mocked Chinese, Hawaiian, and Japanese accents during a discussion about the rapper Ice Spice.
Healy has not fully apologized for his sentiments to these groups, but did give Ice Spice a non-apology during a 1975 show, stating, “I just feel a bit bad, and I’m kind of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you.” It’s truly disgusting and a pattern of behavior Healy seems to have towards women and people of color.
Sawayama choosing the song “STFU!” as a call-out to Healy is significant because there are several lyrics in the song that refer to Healy’s actions indirectly such as, “How come you don’t respect me? Expecting fantasies to be my reality why don’t you just sit down and shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up.”
Though it’s unclear if Sawayama will ever gain ownership of her masters a la Taylor Swift, she sent a clear message that she’s tired of being pushed around by men like Healy and he, and those like him, need to STFU.
(featured image: Shirlaine Forrest/Redferns/Getty Images)
