The 1975 have announced the cancellation of their shows in Jakarta, Indonesia and Taipei, Taiwan, after their performance at the Good Vibes Festival in Malaysia was disrupted and banned from entering the country earlier this week.
Indonesian festival We The Fest It has been announced today (July 23) that The 1975, who headlined the third day of the festival tonight, will cancel their remaining Asia performances “due to current circumstances.”
“The band never takes the decision to cancel a concert lightly and were looking forward to playing for fans in Jakarta and Taipei, but unfortunately, due to the current circumstances, it is impossible to go ahead with scheduled concerts,” the band said, according to a statement shared by We The Fest.
The cancellation of The 1975 concerts in Indonesia and Taiwan comes after frontman Matty Healy criticized the Malaysian government while performing at the country’s Good Vibes Festival on Friday night, July 21. Healy also kissed bassist Ross MacDonald on stage, before announcing, just seven songs into their set, that they were banned from Malaysia and had to leave.
“I made a mistake. When we were booking shows, I didn’t look at that. I don’t see the fucking point, okay, I don’t see the point of inviting 1975 to a country and then telling us who we can have sex with,” Healy said on stage before the kiss.
He continued: “I’m sorry if that bothers you and you’re religious and it’s part of your fucking government, but your government is a bunch of fucking retards and I don’t care anymore.
Malaysian law criminalises same-sex sexual activity, and its penal code criminalises “unnatural carnal intercourse” and acts of “gross indecency”.
The following day, Malaysia’s Minister of Communications announced that he had ordered the remainder of the festival to be cancelled. Good Vibes Festival then released an official statement to confirm that it was canceled and that the decision was made as a result of the incident that occurred during The 1975’s performance.
The Good Vibes Festival claimed that 1975 management had “assured” them before the show that Healy and the band would “respect local performance guidelines”.
“Unfortunately,” they wrote, “Healy failed to honor these assurances, despite our confidence in his commitment. We were completely shocked by Healy’s actions, and we suspended the show as soon as possible after the incident.”
In an Instagram Story yesterday (July 22), Healy responded to the news, sharing a statement about the festival’s cancellation and writing, “Okay, why don’t you try not to bond with Ross for 20 years? It’s not as easy as it looks.”
A representative for Good Vibes Festival did not comment when asked to respond to Healy’s Instagram story.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘440680384427371’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
