The 1975‘s Matty Healy came under fire on Thursday (May 28) for a tweet about George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died following brutality from Minnesota police on Monday.
“If you truly believe that ‘ALL LIVES MATTER’ you need to stop facilitating the end of black ones,” Healy tweeted along with a link to the band’s song “Love It If We Made It,” which features lyrics “We’re fucking in a car, shooting heroin/ Saying controversial things just for the hell of it/ Selling melanin and then suffocate the black men/ Start with misdemeanors and we’ll make a business out of them.”
The frontman then faced heavy backlash from critics who accused the singer of using the tragedy to promote the 1975’s new album, Notes on a Conditional Form, which dropped last week.
In response, Healy tweeted, “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 deactivated his account altogether.
The clip surfaced on the Internet earlier this week shows a Minnesota officer allegedly suffocating Floyd by kneeling on his neck. Floyd is heard crying out that he couldn’t breathe and was in pain, but he was ignored. Floyd went to Hennepin County Medical Center after falling unconscious, and died shortly after. Though the officers involved were fired on Tuesday, the incident sparked national outrage on the racism that exists in the United States.
