Matty Healy: Difference between revisions

Matty Healy
Healy performing in Latvia in 2019
Born	Matthew Timothy Healy (1989-04-08) 8 April 1989 Hendon, London, England
Other names	Truman Black
Alma mater	Academy of Contemporary Music
Occupations	Singer-songwriter musician record producer
Years active	2012–present
Works	Songs written and produced
Parents	Denise Welch Tim Healy
Awards	Full list
Musical career
Origin	Wilmslow, Cheshire
Genres	Pop rock synth-pop indie pop indie rock electropop alternative rock
Instruments	Vocals guitar piano drums bass
Labels	Dirty Hit Polydor Capitol Vagrant Interscope
Member of	The 1975
Website	truman-black.com
Signature
File:Matty Healy Signature.png

Matthew Timothy Healy (born 8 April 1989) is an English singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer who came to prominence as the lead vocalist and lyricist of pop rock band the 1975.

Born in London and raised largely in the Cheshire town of Wilmslow, Healy formed the 1975 in 2002 with schoolmates Ross MacDonald, Adam Hann, and George Daniel. The band released four extended plays before releasing their self-titled studio album in 2013. They followed it with I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It (2016), A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (2018), Notes on a Conditional Form (2020) and Being Funny in a Foreign Language (2022). Each of their studio albums reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and garnered critical acclaim.

Healy's songwriting has been widely praised and deals with themes including the millennial generation, masculinity, current affairs, as well as his own life and relationships. He is also known for his provocative on-stage persona which has been characterised in part as performance art. His work with the band made him the recipient of four Brit Awards, and two Ivor Novello Awards including Songwriter of the Year. He has also been nominated twice for the Mercury Prize and Grammy Awards.

Early life

Matthew Timothy Healy was born on 8 April 1989 in Hendon, north London. He is a son of actor Tim Healy and actress and television presenter Denise Welch; they divorced in 2012. His younger brother, Louis, is an actor. Both parents are of Irish descent. He lived in Melbourne, Australia from the ages of two to four but spent most his early years living on a cattle farm in Hedley on the Hill, Northumberland. The family moved to Wilmslow, Cheshire when he was nine.

Healy's parents were working actors of stage and television for much of his childhood, with his mother becoming a celebrity figure in his teens. He himself had no interest in acting but did appear as an extra in his parents' television shows including Coronation Street, Byker Grove and Waterloo Road. His parents were music fans, introducing him to soul and Motown, and his father socialised with many musicians including Brian Johnson of AC/DC (who became Healy's godfather), Rick Wakeman of Yes, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, and Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra. Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order was a neighbour. His mother's godfather, screenwriter Ian La Frenais, introduced him to Ringo Starr. The first guitar Healy ever played was used by Dire Straits to record "Romeo and Juliet". He has said this early proximity to musicians meant the possibility of "being a rock star was part of my reality."

Healy was a quiet child, with recurring vivid nightmares. He was an only child for the first twelve years of his life "so there were a lot of video games, a lot of Michael Jackson videos, a lot of singing and dancing to myself and self-involvement." Unlike his younger brother, Healy "grew up in a party house" and has recalled sleeping "in the bar" of London's Groucho Club on numerous occasions. He has remembered this aspect of his childhood as "exciting" rather than "distressing." His parents both had issues with alcohol and his mother used cocaine to self-medicate during periods of acute depression, including postpartum.

Healy was privately educated at Lady Barn House School and King's School, Macclesfield; he was expelled from the latter for starting a fight club. He won a King's School talent contest at age 12, with renditions of songs by The La's and Oasis, and told a local newspaper he hoped "to be a pop singer" when he grew up. He then transferred to the local comprehensive Wilmslow High School, where he met and befriended his future bandmates. Years later, Healy called school "a tedious imposition, getting in the way of me being a pop star". He left school at sixteen with two GCSEs. He then attended music college for three months before dropping out. The Academy of Contemporary Music website lists Healy as a 2008 alumnus.

Career

2002–2011: Formation and early years of the 1975

Healy with the 1975 in 2014

In 2002, at the age of 13, Healy formed the 1975, along with lead guitarist Adam Hann, bassist Ross MacDonald, and drummer and producer George Daniel, who he had met at Wilmslow High School. Daniel's initial impression of Healy was as "the most outwardly passionate person in school". Healy was originally the drummer, but was promoted to frontman after the departure of Elliott Williams. Their first performance for 200 people was as part of the council-run Macclesfield Youth Bands.

After leaving school, Healy persuaded his bandmates to attend university in Manchester: "I didn't get any GCSEs so I didn't have options. It was the band or nothing." He worked in a Chinese restaurant during this period. Healy's mother worried about his future but his father "believed in [him] unquestioningly". The band played under various names – Talkhouse, The Slowdown, Bigsleep, Drive Like I Do – around Greater Manchester.

The 1975 were rejected by every major record label, with executives confused by the band's genre-hopping approach. Healy later remarked: "We create in the way we consume. We're from this generation, and we don't want to be from another time." Healy has described the band's manager Jamie Oborne as the band's "fifth member".

2012–2014: Rise to fame

After seven years as the band's manager, Oborne set up his own independent label, Dirty Hit, and the band released four extended plays in quick succession; Facedown and Sex in 2012, and Music for Cars and IV in 2013.

Healy performing in Italy in 2014

The band began to build momentum in late 2012. Radio DJ Zane Lowe, who was then at the BBC, gave airplay to the EP Facedown, and the band had radio success with "Sex" and "Chocolate", and released their debut album The 1975 in 2013. Healy said the album was inspired by John Hughes and was intended to be "almost a soundtrack to our teenage years." In reviewing the album, Michael Hann of The Guardian said "the best of the writing here – and it works better at length – is fabulous." The album reached number one on the UK Album Chart. The band sold out three nights at London's Brixton Academy, supported The Rolling Stones at Hyde Park, and played the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival.

2015–2017: Breakthrough

The band announced their second album, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It in 2018. They premiered the lead single, "Love Me", simultaneously scheduling a support tour in Europe, North America, and Asia. They premiered the second single, "UGH!", on 10 December on Beats 1. The album's third single, "The Sound" debuted on BBC Radio 1 on 14 January 2016. The 1975 released the fourth single "Somebody Else" on 15 February on Beats 1 before the album's release. "A Change of Heart" premiered on Radio 1 on 22 February, four days prior to the album's release.

Alexis Petridis of The Guardian praised Healy's "witty self-awareness and deprecation" of Healy's lyrics: "He has an eye for a prosaic detail that undercuts the air of bustling self-importance." The album reached number one in both the UK and US, earned a Grammy Award nomination, Brit Award nomination, and was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize.

2018–2021: Critical acclaim

A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (2018), the bands third studio album was released in 2018, and also nominated for the Mercury Prize, and Notes on a Conditional Form (2020), both of which topped the UK Albums Chart.

Healy performing in Germany in 2019

In 2019, Healy received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Song for "Give Yourself A Try" from their third studio album, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships. The album also won a Brit Award for British Album of the Year. In 2020, the band won Band of the Decade, Best British Band, and the Innovator Award at the NME Awards.

Healy’s most critically acclaimed songwriting is the song "Love It If We Made It". The song’s lyrics are inspired by tabloid headlines of articles covering social and political events of that period, such as police brutality, Black Lives Matter ("selling melanin and then suffocating black men"), the death of Alan Kurdi and the refugee crisis in Europe ("a beach of drowning three-year olds"), Colin Kaepernick’s anthem protest against racial injustice in the US ("kneeling on a pitch"), verbatim quotes from Donald Trump ("I moved on her like a bitch"), as well as direct quotes of Trump's tweets ("thank you Kanye, very cool") and a quote from Trump's presidential campaign t-shirt ("fuck your feelings"). The song also refers to post-truth politics, attention economy, prison system in the US, information overload, or the death of rapper Lil Peep. Healy has described it as "a montage for the times, but it’s not going to change the times. It doesn’t provide a solution." The song’s lyrics earned Healy the Best Contemporary Song award at the 2019 Ivor Novello Awards, where he was also awarded Songwriter of the Year.

Healy and George Daniel of the 1975 co-produced No Rome's EP RIP Indo Hisashi, which was released in August 2018. In 2021, he and Daniel produced Beabadoobee's solo EP Our Extended Play, which was released in March 2021. In October 2021, Healy guest-opened for friend Phoebe Bridgers at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on her Reunion Tour where they performed the first live duet of the 1975 "Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America".

2022–present: Continued success

Healy performing in the United States in 2022

In 2022, the band released their fifth studio album Being Funny in a Foreign Language, reaching their fifth consecutive number one in the UK. For his work on the album, he was nominated for Songwriter of the Year at the Ivor Novello Awards. In 2023, they won a Brit Award for British Rock/Alternative Act and received a Brit Award nominations for British Album of the Year and British Group.

In April 2023, the band released Live With The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, which reached number two in the UK.

Healy and the band embarked on a world tour, At Their Very Best, to support the new album. The set included a life-size house, and two distinct acts and a narrative interlude, the first being the show and then the concert. The show part, which Healy served as writer and creative director, received unanimous critical acclaim with five star reviews from the Rolling Stone, NME, The Observer, The Telegraph, Evening Standard, and Metro. In a review of the tour, Rolling Stone wrote, "Healy and co. have set an extremely high bar for other gigs this year. Part performance art, part rock show, all bolstered by some of the best pop songs to have emerged in the last decade. It should be considered a defining blueprint on how to do arena shows." A concert tour, across arenas in North America, entitled Still... At Their Very Best, will run from September to December 2023.

"Sleep Tight", a Healy and Rob Milton composition, was released by Holly Humberstone in April 2022, and two tracks written by Healy, "Pictures of Us" and "You're Here That's the Thing", are in Beabadoobee's album Beatopia in July 2022.

In 2022, Healy co-wrote an unreleased song with Lewis Capaldi for his Broken by Desire to Be Heavenly Sent album, and also worked with Taylor Swift on an unreleased version of her Midnights album. In 2023, Healy co-produced and featured on The Japanese House's single "Sunshine Baby".

Artistry

Influences

Healy performing in Poland in 2019

Michael Jackson's HIStory show at Wembley Arena in 1996 was Healy's first concert and he has described it as "one of the most memorable and important experiences I think I've ever had." He has named The Streets as the artist that made him know "[he] was going to start a band." "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem is his "forever song" and he has tried to replicate it "technically" and "emotionally" throughout his career.

Healy has always been drawn to 80s music "when pop stars weren't so encumbered with self-awareness. I know that time had its decadence, but there's a real freedom in those records." When the band was recording their debut album, they tried to capture the mood of a John Hughes movie — “the apocalyptic sense of being a teenager”.

In 2013, Healy listed his ten all-time favourite albums for Louder Than War. As well as mentions of The Streets and Michael Jackson, Healy listed albums by Glassjaw, My Bloody Valentine, Alexander O'Neal, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Hundred Reasons, Carole King, Peter Gabriel and James Taylor.

In 2020, Healy recorded a podcast series interviewing his musical heroes; he had conversations with Stevie Nicks, Brian Eno, Steve Reich, Kim Gordon, Mike Kinsella, Conor Oberst and Bobby Gillespie. Healy has also cited The Blue Nile, Talking Heads and Sigur Rós as influences.

Healy has also been influenced by literary figures including Joan Didion, Jack Keruoac, Seamus Heaney, and Arthur Rimbaud, describing Rimbaud's work as "dense and revolutionary". He has discussed how stand-up comedy is the biggest influence on his songwriting.

Voice

Healy possesses a tenor vocal range, with a rasp from his cigarette smoking. Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker wrote that Healy has a "shape-shifting voice" where "he croons and wails and screams and murmurs, shading his delivery with a variety of personae". His voice has also been described as "supple," "mellifluously melodic," and "always raw, with emotion".

Songwriting

The lyricism of Healy is known for its wit, honesty, and self-awareness. His genre-bending songs are noted to contain "complex, clever, catchy" streams of consciousness and tongue-twisters, with lyrics that are "topical, explicit, and relentlessly self-referential." He has been called by Consequence as "rock's poet laureate of heartbreak, growing up, and fucking up," with NME stating that he is "undoubtedly, one of this generation’s finest wordsmiths."

Healy performing in France in 2014

The New York Times described him as "one of the best contemporary writers — especially outside of rap — on the process of consumption, whether it's drugs or culture or goods". Pitchwork stated that Healy "is cursed with a self-awareness that can turn a simple idea into a galaxy-brain diatribe". The Fader described his songwriting as having "layered, claustrophobic lyrics [which] reveal[s] a man obsessed with fear and fragility, success and failure, endlessly looking for answers about himself and the pop-culture world he uncomfortably inhabits". GQ has dubbed Healy "the poster boy for overthinkers", with Ann Powers of NPR describing him as "an astute social observer who doubles as a confessionalist, offering disclosures that are always suspect: He might be lying every time he opens his mouth." Hann of The Guardian has remarked upon his "lyrical frankness: he wrote not about the party life of the 20-something, but about the fallout from the party." Lynskey of The Guardian stated: "Healy is often his own sharpest critic. He uses dialogue in his songs – half-real, half-invented – to interrogate himself. Integral to his commitment to honesty and self-awareness is the knowledge that honesty and self-awareness can turn into just another shtick if you are not careful ... [He] is one of few songwriters who can examine internet culture without rendering you paralysed by embarrassment, because his music sounds the way the modern world feels: overstimulated, lurching between excitement and anxiety."

Healy often writes about the millennial generation, masculinity, current affairs, as well as his own life and relationships. He has also written songs about his drug abuse, most notably "Chocolate" and "It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)", a song about his heroin addiction and recovery. The song "Ballad of Me and My Brain" refers to his mental health.

Healy and Daniel are the principal songwriters of the 1975 with Daniel describing himself as the "primary producer" and Healy as the "primary songwriter". Healy has described their relationship as "symbiotic": "We’ve got a shared musical vocabulary. Even if we’re both working remotely, we’re both working together."

Performance style

Healy is noted for his charisma and stage presence. The Telegraph described him as "a compelling rock star, a gifted multi-instrumentalist... whose self-questioning lyrics and uninhibited stagecraft ensured that it was hard to take your eyes off him". The Guardian described him as "one of music's most compulsively watchable provocateurs thanks to his inescapable charisma, open-mouthed honesty and his band's self-aware and sparkling 80s pop-rock."

Healy performing in Australia in 2020

Rebecca Jennings of Vox describes Healy's on-stage persona as "a self-aware, ironic performance of fame and authenticity in the social media age" while Lynskey of Billboard characterised him as "a rock star for a generation that's too clued-in to believe in rock stars." Healy, who often chain smokes and drinks from a bottle of red wine on stage, says he plays a character on-stage: "I do the Jim Morrison thing a bit, but I know that you know that I know that this isn’t real. I’m so aware of the vocabulary of rock’n’roll." He is interested in playing with contemporary audiences' awareness of rock star cliches: "That ridiculousness, and the elephants in the room are always the things that I find the most interesting. Everything apart from the music is ridiculous, because we all know too much." Healy, who describes his private self as "soft and quiet", has acknowledged that his "meta-layered" approach to performance means there are public "misconceptions" about him.

Healy doing press-ups as part of his performance for the 1975's At Their Very Best concert tour

The 1975's At Their Very Best world tour in 2022 and 2023 includes a commentary on contemporary masculinity: "It’s about how if you’re a single guy and you’ve spent a year or so alone on the internet, you go mental. The show is about looking at masculinity, looking at being famous. It’s about being what’s real and what’s sincere and not sincere.” Clips from the show went viral on TikTok and other social media platforms, prompting wide media coverage of his onstage actions, dubbing him "a sleazeball" or a "sensitive dirtbag". In Rolling Stone's review of the performance, the magazine stated that Healy delivered "a subversive and surreal take on modern masculinity [that] when viewed in isolation on social media, that all-importance nuance is entirely absent." The performance included him eating a raw steak, depicting masturbation and delivering 20 press-ups in immediate succession. In the US leg of the tour, Healy got a tattoo on stage that read "iM a MaN". Healy has also invited both male and female members of his audience to kiss him during his performance of the song "Robbers" and, on one occasion, sucked a fan's thumb. The Guardian said it sparked conversations regarding consent, fantasy and art in 2022, and noted that Healy asked for fans' permission first.

Legacy

Healy has influenced numerous music artists and has inspired several singer-songwriters. Billie Eilish has said Healy was an early inspiration for her: "His show is the second show I ever went to in my life. He changed so much about who I am, how I write music." Lorde has described "Somebody Else" as a song that "really influenced Melodrama. It influenced the tones and the colors and the emotions." Halsey was "really influenced" by Healy's lyrical approach stating: "His lyrical content is a lot of dialogue, a lot of places. It’s very descriptive and it creates this honest, authentic image." Lewis Capaldi has described the 1975 as his "favourite band" and is particularly drawn to Healy's "self-awareness" and is "envious" of his ability to write humourous lyrics: "He's incredible, I absolutely love him." No Rome, Beabadoobee, The Japanese House, and Heather Baron-Gracie have all been mentored by Healy, and he has co-produced their early works.

Stevie Nicks, Brian Eno, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles, Haley Williams, Phoebe Bridgers, Charli XCX, Keith Urban, Ice Spice, and Sabrina Carpenter are known fans of his work.

Politics and activism

Healy identifies as a liberal and a "traditional progressive". In the first decade of his career, Healy was outspoken in his support of progressive issues. By 2022, Healy had become "suspicious of woke-ism as a viable worldview or device to make things better" and wanted to communicate to younger fans the perils of overly rigid moral standards: "You will make mistakes, you will hurt people, you will do things that some people will perceive as rotten. It’s this standard that I’m trying to break down. I’m just a bloke, so are you." "I’m not afraid to apologise or change my mind in public ... I can only know a certain amount of things, and if one of them’s wrong, what can I do? I’ve got to grow and say ‘That was stupid’, and that I’m sorry." While onstage in Denmark in 2023, Healy referred to leftist comedians and social critics George Carlin, Bill Hicks and Lenny Bruce as his "heroes" who exposed social hypocrisy with vulgarity, adding: "I do feel that if the left loses its ability to fuck shit up then we leave too much space for the right."

Healy performing in Spain in 2014

Healy did not publicly support Labour ahead of the 2019 United Kingdom general election and later said he was "disillusioned. I don’t like Jeremy Corbyn, I don’t like Boris Johnson, I didn’t trust either of them." In 2023, Healy criticised "the apathy of the left" in contemporary British politics: "The Labour Party here can't even get behind the rail workers and dockers' strikes." On stage in the same year, Healy urged the audience to resist the demonisation of strikers. While performing in Scotland in January and May, Healy spoke in support of Scottish independence.

Healy is outspoken on climate change issues. In 2020, he invited Greta Thunberg to record a speech about climate change for a 1975 track. Conservative MP David Davies accused Healy of "hypocrisy" given his touring schedule but Healy responded: "The idea that no one should say anything or try to help if they haven’t 100% figured out how to be carbon neutral, along with the rest of the world, is a really illogical way of thinking about the problem." The 1975 use an "eco-management" company when touring; a tree is planted for every ticket sold, the crew catering is sustainable, there is no plastic, and an area is set up in each venue where people can learn about "proper recycling".

Healy has been outspoken about women's rights, particularly as it relates to the music industry. In 2018, Healy apologized after stating that "the reason misogyny doesn't happen in rock and roll anymore is because it's a vocabulary that existed for so long that it got weeded out". He later described his comments as "ignorant" and "wrong, just outright misinformed." When the 1975 won Best British Group at the 2019 Brit Awards, Healy used his acceptance speech to criticise misogyny in the music industry, quoting a piece by The Guardian's journalist Laura Snapes. Also that year, Healy denounced Alabama's anti-abortion laws during a concert in the state. In 2020, he pledged to only playing at music festivals with a gender-balanced lineup.

Healy performing in the United States in 2019

Healy has spoken about young men being radicalised into anti-feminist communities: "I do know that the right wing is more successful with the acquiring of young men than the left is, and as somebody who’s definitely on the left, it’s interesting to watch, because the left don’t seem to have [an] ideal masculinity, whereas the right have a very, very easy one." He has remarked that in contemporary pop culture, the celebrated man is "some meta-performance piece about deconstruction": "The only form of masculinity that is celebrated is one that deconstructs it. So: in a dress. I don’t know what it is to be a man if you’re not just deconstructing being a man and having that [be] celebrated."

Healy was not raised in a religious household and identifies as an atheist. He is a patron of Humanists UK, a charitable organisation that promotes secular humanism, human rights and represents non-religious people. In 2014, Healy, who described himself as "profoundly anti-religion," tweeted: "ISIS are cutting little girls heads off and you want to challenge a non-religious, humanist perspective? I don't understand the world at all". When challenged by a nineteen-year-old Muslim woman operating a Harry Styles–themed Twitter account, he said he "resent[ed] being 'educated' on religion by a Harry Styles fan account." When asked about the resulting controversy in 2015, Healy said: "I may not be as progressive as I’d like to be. There are some innate structures of thought within me that I’m really embarrassed about. I’m not as bright as I’d like to be." By 2018, Healy's position on faith had evolved: "I used to be an ATHEIST, now I'm like an atheist. It's not that I have softened on the logic or anything, but I'm really understanding and quite sensitive of the culture of religion. Because culture is a very different thing to scripture and dogma."

Healy has been a vocal advocate for LGBT rights. In 2018, Healy and his bandmates made what The Guardian described as a "significant" donation to an LGBTQ+ community centre for London. In June 2019, Healy won Ally of the Year at the Diva Awards for using his platform to promote LGBT rights. In August 2019, Healy was banned from Dubai after displaying a pride flag and kissing a male fan onstage to protest Dubai's anti-LGBT laws, an act that was punishable by ten years in prison. In December 2022, he performed at the 8th annual Ally Coalition benefit show in support of LGBTQ+ youth. In 2019, he appeared on the cover of Attitude’s Allies Issue.

When performing the 1975's 2017 song "Loving Someone" on stage, Healy regularly prefaces the song with comment on social issues; the song has variously been dedicated to victims of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, used to express solidarity with Black, Muslim and gay Americans following the 2016 US election results, used to decry the "regressive ideals" of Brexit, and dedicated to the people of Manchester and London following the 2017 Manchester Arena attack. In May 2019, an on-stage diatribe at an Alabama gig directed at the state's Human Life Protection Act meant the band had to flee the open carry state for safety reasons. In December 2020, he used his Instagram to encourage his fans to support an Amnesty International campaign for Gustavo Gatica, who had been blinded after being shot by police during the 2019–2022 Chilean protests.

Public image

Healy performing in the United Kingdom in 2016

Healy has been described as a "spokesperson for the millennial generation" by Rolling Stone, as "the enfant terrible of pop-rock" by Pitchfork and as "a cannily self-made bad boy" by Ann Powers of NPR.

He has built a reputation as an unusually candid interviewee. Dorian Lynskey of Billboard described the experience of interviewing him as "a wild ride ... [His] earnest craving to be understood creates a sense of intimacy disproportionate to the fact that we’ve only just met." Lynskey, writing in The Guardian, said Healy's "compulsion to say whatever is on his mind makes him a divisive figure – to some the mood board for a generation, to others a pretentious motormouth." Michael Hann of The Guardian has observed that Healy "must be a horror to handle" for his manager and publicist, commenting: "He says absolutely anything, sometimes contradicting himself from sentence to sentence. He makes up words […] and he's grandly, fabulously pretentious ... It was one of the rare interviews that you find yourself fascinated to transcribe." In 2020, Healy said he did not intend to give any more interviews and reflected in 2023: "I think I’d gotten to a point where I didn’t know how much I wanted to qualify my statements."

Healy performing in Germany in 2019

Healy has been described by Jonathan Dean of The Times as "the first, and last, great frontman of the social media era". He first used the online pseudonym Truman Black as a teenager to prevent fans of his mother messaging him on Facebook, and later used it as his handle across his public social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. Described by Ann Powers of NPR as "a cannily self-made bad boy," NME's Andrew Trendell noted that Healy had shown a "sensei-like mastery of […] shitposting", and that "[h]is Instagram stories have been awash with eyebrow-raising jokes, artful trolling of hardcore fans, and explicit attempts to get cancelled". Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker has described Healy's public persona in 2023 as "a post-woke rock star, switching unpredictably between tenderness and trollishness" and noted that, on Instagram, Healy "constantly made fun of both himself and the fans who seemed obsessed with his morality."

Healy deactivated his Twitter account in 2020 because he no longer wanted to participate in the "culture war" and wanted to take a more considered approach to his public statements. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Healy had tweeted: "[I]f you truly believe that 'ALL LIVES MATTER' you need to stop facilitating the end of black ones", and posted a Youtube link to the 1975's protest song "Love It If We Made It". Amid online criticism that his tweet was self-promotional, Healy apologised and deactivated his account. He later reflected: "My reaction in the room to all that Twitter shit was like, ‘Oh fuck off! You know that I’m not using this as an opportunity to monetise the half-a-pence I get paid for a fucking YouTube play’. What I’m saying is, ‘Here’s something I’ve really thought about’, and all you’ve been asking for four days is ‘Say something about it!’ So I said, ‘Here’s what I think’.”

Healy was involved in two controversies in early 2023. Firstly, in January, a video of Healy performing "Love It If We Made It" went viral. While singing the lyric "Thank you, Kanye, very cool", which is a direct quote of a tweet from Donald Trump, Healy marched on the spot and raised his left hand, leading to online debate about whether the gesture was intended as a Nazi salute. In November 2022, Healy had denounced West's recent antisemitic remarks, saying that "grief and "mental health issues" did not excuse them. Healy again became embroiled in controversy in February after appearing on the leftist irony podcast The Adam Friedland Show. He agreed to be a guest partly to provoke a reaction from his fanbase. During the episode, he laughed as co-hosts Friedland and Nick Mullen joked about the possible origin of Ice Spice's stage name - describing her as an "Inuit Spice Girl" - and used Chinese and Hawaiian accents. These comments were later widely and incorrectly attributed to Healy. Healy also joked about watching Ghetto Gaggers internet pornography in which Black women are "brutalized". In a subsequent podcast episode, Friedland said he had mentioned Ghetto Gaggers because he found the alliteration in the title funny and did not "even know if [Healy] was watching that."

In an interview conducted in early March 2023, Healy told Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker that the controversy was "people going, ‘Oh, there’s a bad thing over there, let me get as close to it as possible so you can see how good I am.'" By early April 2023, Healy had deactivated his Instagram account, stating during an Adelaide concert: "The era of me being a fucking arsehole is coming to an end. I've had enough. I perform all the time and it's my job and I love doing this but I can't perform off the stage anymore as I just want to be a bloke." At a concert in Auckland later that month, Healy said his joking had been "misconstrued" and apologised to Ice Spice: "I’m so sorry. It's OK for me to be like, a trickster or whatever, but I don't want to be perceived as mean-hearted ... I am genuinely sorry if I upset her 'cause I fucking love her." He expressed regret for past actions: "I've been a bit irresponsible. I don't like being famous. I make a joke out of everything and I've taken it too far sometimes in front of a lot of people and I feel embarrassed. That's the truth." The podcast remarks resurfaced in May and were widely condemned by both mainstream publications and social media users. Jon Caramanica, pop music critic at the New York Times, described the public response as an example of context collapse. Healy reactivated his Instagram account in June, deleting all previous posts.

Personal life

Residence

Healy resides in northwest London with a cane corso dog named after Norwegian black metal band Mayhem.

Relationships

In 2013, Healy was romantically linked to American singer Halsey. Between 2015 and 2019, Healy was in a relationship with Australian model Gabriella Brooks. From early 2020 to 2022, Healy was in a relationship with English singer FKA Twigs.

Sexuality

Healy identifies as straight and has said he is not attracted to men in a "carnal, sexual way". In 2019, Queerty reported that Healy had come out as an "aesthete". Healy issued a statement on Twitter, criticising the publication for misinterpreting his words: "I didn't come out as anything. […] I'm not playing a game and trying to take up queer spaces, I'm simply trying to be an ally and this headline makes me uncomfortable."

Healy was a "gangly and effeminate" teenager and was drawn to George Michael, Prince and Michael Jackson rather than traditional figures of masculinity. Healy's parents were both in creative industries and "the kind of people that I aspired to be, happened to be gay": "I suppose it would make more sense for me to be gay or bi. But it’s just kind of where I come from. I hope I never exploit that ... The idea of making a self who is cis, white and straight more interesting by aligning themselves with that culture really makes me wince."

Health

Healy is a recovering heroin addict, and has also had issues with cocaine and benzodiazepine abuse. In late 2017, he spent seven weeks at an in-patient drug rehabilitation clinic in Barbados, following an intervention by his bandmates. He has spoken openly about his drug use: "I don’t want to fetishize it, because it’s really dull and it’s really dangerous. The thought of being to a young person what people like Burroughs were to me when I was a teenager makes me feel ill." As of 2022, Healy still smokes marijuana.

Healy has ADHD, anxiety, and deals with chronic migraines. In a 2022 interview, Healy mentioned being in therapy and referred to dealing with trauma from "some early sexual experiences that, as [he] got older, were really, really difficult to deal with."

Discography

See also: List of songs by Matty Healy

The 1975

Main article: The 1975 discography

Extended plays

• Facedown (2012)
• Sex (2012)
• Music for Cars (2013)
• IV (2013)

Studio albums

• The 1975 (2013)
• I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It (2016)
• A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (2018)
• Notes on a Conditional Form (2020)
• Being Funny in a Foreign Language (2022)

Collaborations

• 2014 – Travis Scott – "Don't Play (featuring Big Sean and The 1975)" (co-composer, featured artist)
• 2015 – The Japanese House – Pools to Bathe In EP (co-producer)
• 2015 – The Japanese House – Clean EP (co-producer)
• 2017 – The Japanese House – Saw You in a Dream EP (co-producer)
• 2018 – Pale Waves – My Mind Makes Noises (co-composer and co-producer of "Television Romance" and ''There's a Honey")
• 2018 – No Rome – RIP Indo Hisashi EP (co-producer, vocals for "Narcissist")
• 2019 – No Rome – Crying In The Prettiest Places EP (co-producer)
• 2021 – Beabadoobee – Our Extended Play EP (co-producer)
• 2021 – Holly Humberstone – "Please Don't Leave Just Yet" (co-composer, co-producer)
• 2021 – No Rome – "Spinning" (vocals, co-composer, co-producer)
• 2022 – Holly Humberstone – "Sleep Tight" (co-composer)
• 2022 – Beabadoobee – Beatopia (co-composer for "Pictures of Us" and "You're Here That's the Thing", vocals, guitar)
• 2023 – The Japanese House – "Sunshine Baby" (vocals, co-producer)

Accolades

See also: List of awards and nominations received by The 1975

Among Healy's accolades are four Brit Awards, and two Ivor Novello Awards including Songwriter of the Year. He has also been nominated twice for the Mercury Prize and Grammy Awards.

External links

• Official website
• Matty Healy on Instagram
• Matty Healy at IMDb