The 1975s Matthew Healy Addresses Derogatory Podcast Comments, Apologizes to Ice Spice

The 1975s Matthew Healy has apologized to Ice Spice for his derogatory comments on the Adam Friedland Show podcast in February, Rolling Stone reports. Speaking at a 1975 concert in New Zealand, Healy acknowledged that he can take it too far sometimes in front of too many people and said, I dont want Ice Spice to think Im a dick. I love you, Ice Spice. Im so sorry. But he failed to address wider criticism of the podcast appearance.

Healy has been under fire since the podcast aired in February. During the show, Healy admitted to sending an unreturned direct message to Ice Spice. As a result, Healy and Adam Friedland explained to co-host Nick Mullen who Ice Spice is, which led to Mullen calling the rapper an Inuit Spice Girl and a chubby Chinese lady before he and Friedland imitated her imagined accent, based on their perception of her racial background. Healy egged on the hosts as they imitated Chinese and Hawaiian accents. Later in the podcast, Healy laughed as Friedland and Mullen imitated Japanese accents.

The three of them also made chauvinistic jokes about women throughout the podcast, and did a segment on how the LGBTQ+ community perceives queerbaiting. Healy said it was not offensive to the gays but to young girls who think its a new thing. When one of the hosts joked that gay men enjoy being queerbaited, Healy gently backtracked, saying, Maybe its not all the gay guys, but its a lot of them. In the rest of the podcast, he gave little if any pushback against offensive remarks, and joked, Yeah, thats what Ice Spice is like, when the hosts mocked the rappers imagined accent.

After the episode aired, ESEA Music, a United Kingdombased society of East and Southeast Asian people working in music, issued a statement condemning Healys flagrant racism and complicity in laughing along at harmful Asian tropes. As well as summarizing the podcasts content, the statement drew attention to Healys position, at the time, as a director at Dirty Hit Ltd., the company that owns the 1975s label home, Dirty Hit. The label has signed several artists of Asian descent, including Rina Sawayama, Saya Gray, Wallice (who is currently supporting the 1975), No Rome, and Beabadoobee, the statement noted. Sawayama commented on the post, what the actual fuck.

Speaking to the crowd in Auckland, Healy avoided reference to other contentious elements from the podcast, but said his joking got misconstrued. He added, I just feel a bit bad, and Im kind of a bit sorry if Ive offended you. Ice Spice, Im sorry. Its not because Im annoyed that me joking got misconstrued. Its because I dont want Ice Spice to think Im a dick. I love you, Ice Spice. Im so sorry.