Rina Sawayama Responds to Racism in the Music Industry

Rina Sawayama publicly slammed Matty Healy during her performance at the Glastonbury Music Festival, commenting on his recent remarks about Ice Spice.

As the wind blew on her face and the background guitar began to blast its strings, Sawayama declared: 

“I am so f***ing tired of these microaggressions, so tonight, this goes out to a white man that watches Ghetto Gaggers and mocks Asian people on a podcast,” Sawayama paused briefly and shouted, “He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough!” 

#RinaSawayama calls out #MattyHealy at Glastonburypic.twitter.com/Oar6PMogRR

— ▶️ (@presspplay) June 25, 2023

It didn’t take long for the spectators to realize that the “white man” Sawayma was referring to is The 1975 lead singer Matty Healy. 

At the start of May, Healy made headlines after his relationship with singer Taylor Swift went public. The performer maintained the spotlight even after his love story came to an end. Healy continued to stir up the news in the following four weeks – not for good reasons.

Earlier this year, Healy was invited to The Adam Friedland Show podcast, where his controversy officially began. 

In the episode, together with host Adam Friedland, Healy laughingly referred to the singer Ice Spice as “one of the Inuit Spice Girls,” a “Chubby Chinese lady,” and “a f***ing Eskimo.” 

Amidst laughter, the podcasters also mocked Japanese, Hawaiian, and Chinese accents. At a certain point in the podcast, a host asks if the guests thought there were any “Japanese guys” working at the Holocaust concentration camps, “like a foreign exchange program.”  

Healy then encouraged the host to mimic what a Japanese person working at a camp would sound like: “I do really want to hear your impression of that.” 

Sawayama and her mother moved from Japan to London when she was five. The singer speaks openly about her experience growing up in an immigrant household and the challenges she and her family faced.  

“Songwriting has always been very functional for me. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have this room for myself when I was younger to be like, ‘I need to write songs as my creative outlet,’” Sawayama told Who What Wear. “As children of immigrants, you feel obliged to look after your parents because they sacrificed (and they tell you every day). So you feel like you’ve got to make them proud by getting good grades, which is not a healthy pressure to put on a child.” 

Later in the podcast, Friedland recalls when Healy was caught watching “Ghetto Gaggers.” This is a pornographic website that caters to white men and is known for sexualizing, brutalizing, and humiliating women of color. 

According to Friedland, the website’s content was “blaring” shortly after the host and his friends left the party at Healy’s place. 

“I was already flustered; I was dressed as ‘guy who is j***ing off,’ so I had, like, an untucked shirt, and I think it literally was Ghetto Gaggers on the TV — somebody just getting, like, brutalized,” added Healy. 

Unsurprisingly, the episode was widely criticized, and both Spotify and Apple Music removed it from their streaming services. However, listeners can still access the podcast on YouTube. 

Perhaps the most shocking part of Sawayama’s public commentary is that she and Healy used to have a good relationship.

In 2018, Healy became the director of the music label Dirty Hit Ltd. Sawayama signed with the label a year after. 

The 1975 singer praised Sawayama’s record “STFU!” she told NME. 

“Matty had already heard the new single. He heard it maybe two months ago or something, and he was just was texting me loads of stuff, being like, ‘Fuck! This is amazing’ — just being super supportive. So that’s been incredible,” recalled Sawayama.  

Not coincidentally, “STFU!” was the song she dedicated to Healy at the Glastonbury festival while calling out his racist and sexist behavior. 

In light of his controversies, Healy was removed from his position as a music director at Dirty Hit. 

Still, Matty is listed on the “full details of shareholders” document shared with Companies House on February 14. Matty has the right to 18,000 shares, which translates to approximately 4.09% of Dity Hit’s total of 440,000, as reported by BuzzFeed News.

In simpler terms, Healy profits from 4.09% of Dirty Hits’ revenue – partially from Sawayama’s growing success. 

Famous singer Taylor Swift also publicly struggled with the loss of ownership of her own masters. She was coined a “feminist icon” and advocate for women in the music industry. The connection between Matty Healy and Taylor Swift has some spectators questioning Swift’s stance on Sawayama’s current situation.

To support Rina Sawayama, listeners can stream her latest album here.