It’s award season, which means plenty of celebrities are using the extra publicity to make a statement (Beyonce and Jay-Z’s Meghan Markle portrait, anyone?). One band that isn’t shying away from saying how they feel is The 1975. The 1975 are no strangers to getting political, just take the lyrics to their song Love It If We Made It, “The war has been incited and guess what?/ You’re all invited/ And you’re famous/ Modernity has failed us,” so it comes no surprise that they spoke about the #MeToo movement, in wake of abuse allegations against musician Ryan Adams, when they accepted the Brit Award for Best British Artist.
“I just want you to listen to me for one sec. Just a couple of sentences that a friend of ours, Laura Snapes, said this, and I thought that we should all really, really think about it,” Frontman Matty Healy said in a YouTube video of the speech. “She said that in music, male misogynists’ acts are examined for nuance and defended as traits of difficult artists. Whilst women and those that call them out are treated as hysterics who don’t understand art.”
The following day, Healy spoke about the issue on Beats 1 Radio with Snapes and host Matt Wilkinson.
“I’d read it. It was such an amazing piece. So then, I suppose I was like, what do I say? I’m not doing anything like that to be a woke king, or to earn brownie points, it’s just that it was the best thing that I’d read. It didn’t read to me as an opinion, it read to me as a truth,” Healy said. “It was all I was thinking about that day, so I just thought that everybody else should think about it. Laura had said it better than I think I ever could, and I think it’s important that we hear a woman’s voice over a man’s voice. It felt like the right thing to do. So thank you so much for the words.”
It’s awesome when celebrities use their platforms for good. We can’t wait to see what else the 1975 has to say.