During her performance, the Hold the Girl artist appeared to speak out against Dirty Hit labelmate Matty Healy of The 1975, and also claimed that Healy owned her masters.
While introducing her song STFU!, Sawayama walked the Woodsies – formerly known as the John Peel – Stage crowd through the inspiration behind the track. She seemingly dedicated the performance to Healy, whose made a controversial appearance on the Adam Friedland Show podcast back in February – during which derogatory comments, including remarks about the rapper Ice Spice, were made.
“I wrote this because I was sick and tired of these micro-aggressions,” said Sawayama, who didn’t refer to Healy by name – though fans quickly deduced who she could be discussing. “This goes out to a white man that watches Ghetto Gaggers and mocks Asian people on a podcast. He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough.”
RINA SAWAYAMA CALLING OUT MATTY HEALY LET’S GOO pic.twitter.com/1PMc7rnnpm
— Kacper is PROUD OF RINA (@LipaMonae) June 24, 2023
Sawayama has been signed to Dirty Hit since 2019. Healy had been a director at the private limited company behind the UK label, entitled Dirty Hit Limited, from December 2018 until April 2023. The 1975 remain signed to the label, also home to the likes of Beabadoobee and No Rome.
In a 2018 interview with Music Business Worldwide, label boss Jamie Oborne discussed Healy’s involvement within the label, stating that he had “always informed my A&R decisions because we’re super close and have such synergy in our thinking. [Healy’s] influenced me a lot on an A&R level.”
Tonight’s performance from Sawayama, who earlier this year played a starring role in John Wick: Chapter 4, will be available to stream “soon”, according to the BBC site. In the meantime, read our review of her latest album, September’s Hold the Girl. You can also revisit our Aesthetic feature.