It seemed like Taylor Swift’s surprising (and widely dragged) “Karma Remix” with Ice Spice might put a cap on the growing controversy surrounding Matty Healy and his offensive remarks about the Bronx rapper on a recent podcast. However, a new interview with Swift’s rumored beau is only causing more of a Streisand effect.
Over the weekend, the New Yorker published an expansive profile on the enigmatic British singer titled “Who Is Matt Healy?,” which explored his provocative persona through interviews with him and some of his—and Swift’s—musical peers, like Jack Antonoff. Of course, Healy’s responses to some of the backlash he’s accrued over the past year got the most attention on social media.
Specifically, the 34-year-old addressed the internet backlash to his appearance on the podcast “The Adam Friedland Show” in February where hosts Friedland and Nick Mullen referred to Ice Spice an “Inuit Spice Girl,” and “chubby Chinese lady,” while using Chinese and Hawaiian accents to mimic her. Healy can be heard laughing with the hosts and at another point admitted to masturbating to the “Ghetto Gaggers” porn website that fetishizes the abuse of Black women.
Asked by writer Jia Tolentino whether his appearance on the “dirtbag left” podcast was a deliberate provocation, Healy replied, “A little bit, but 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.’ That doesn’t happen.”
Um, has he met a Swiftie?
When Tolentino suggested that his words might actually matter, the 34-year-old 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. 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 previously apologized for the Ice Spice incident during a 1975 concert in April. And Ice Spice went on the record earlier this year as The 1975 stan. Presumably, the drill rapper was calling out some of the critics of her collab with Swift—which has been largely deemed as a PR clean-up—when she thanked her “real” fans “that wanna see a bitch win” on Twitter following her performance with the Grammy winner at MetLife Stadium over the weekend.
Still, Healy’s latest doubling-down on his problematic antics has only angered the internet—both Swifties and non-Switfies alike—more—specifically his declaration that people who are hurt by racism are “lying” or “a bit mental.”
Only time will tell whether Swift’s PR team can handle Healy being in the singer’s squeaky-clean orbit for much longer. Healy, on the other hand, seems committed to his edgelord bit.
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