Matty Healy, frontman for The 1975, deactivated his Twitter account Thursday after coming under fire for linking to one of the band’s songs in a tweet in response to the death of George Floyd.
“If you truly believe that ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ you need to stop facilitating the end of black ones,” the singer wrote, with a link to “Love It If We Made It.” The track begins with: “We’re f**king in a car, shooting heroin / Saying controversial things just for the hell of it / Selling melanin and then suffocate the black men / Start with misdemeanours and we’ll make a business out of them.”
A flood of responses accused Healy of capitalizing on the anger over Floyd’s death to promote his music.
“matty healey has promoted his own work to profit off a movement about black people,” read one tweet. “it’s not defendable and if you are defending him you have no argument in the situation it’s really that simple.”
Another fumed: “his response to a black man being murdered is a link to his song??? f**k him.”
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Healy deleted the tweet and explained: “Sorry I did not link my song in that tweet to make it about me it’s just that the song is literally about this disgusting situation and speaks more eloquently than I can on Twitter.”
He then tweeted the original message again and shared a link to the song in a separate tweet – and then deactivated his account. As of Friday morning, it was still offline.