Matty Healy Addresses Ice Spice Podcast Controversy: "It Doesn't Actually Matter"

"Nobody is sitting there at night slumped at their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and goes, 'What's wrong, darling?' and they go, 'It's just this thing with Matty Healy.'"

Photo: Jordan Curtis Hughes

BY Megan LaPierrePublished May 29, 2023

A presumable many of you would love it if we made it back to not having the foggiest idea who the 1975's frontman Matty Healy is — but nevertheless, the mard persists. When he's not reportedly canoodling with Taylor Swift or being called a "fuckwit" by Noel Gallagher, the musician continues to make headlines for, well, being himself.

Back in April, Healy sort of apologized for discussing Bronx rapper (and extremely recent Swift collaborator) Ice Spice's ethnicity on Adam Friedland's podcast earlier this year. In a new interview with Jia Tolentino for The New Yorker, the singer-songwriter addressed the uproar-inducing appearance on the Cum Town host's show.

The context was that, amid a circus of press, Healy wanted to do some promo that felt a little more authentic to how he would chat with the lads. When Tolentino pressed, he admitted to having purposefully baited his fans a little bit by laughing along with Friedland and co-host Nick Mullen's attempts to guess Ice Spice's ethnicity, mocking a number of different accents.

"But it doesn't actually matter," Healy explained. "Nobody is sitting there at night slumped at their computer, and their boyfriend comes over and goes, 'What's wrong, darling?' and they go, 'It's just this thing with Matty Healy.' That doesn't happen."

The writer suggested that maybe, in fact, it does — to which the musician responded, "If it does, you're either deluded or you are, sorry, a liar. You're either lying that you are hurt, or you're a bit mental for being hurt."

He added, "It's just 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.' And I kind of want them to do that, because they're demonstrating something so base level."

Healy is all about base-level impulses lately, having both eaten raw meat and gotten "I'm a man" tattooed on him mid-performance during the 1975's North American tour.

"I'm not trying to make myself famous," the singer-songwriter told Tolentino. "I want to be known for what I do. But now fame is about being known for who you are. And people are complicated. If people are going to make me this famous, I'm going to make people work for it."

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