In a new celeb beef no one saw coming, lead vocalist of British pop-rock band The 1975 has lashed out at Australian radio station triple j in a smattering of snarky pot shots.
And fans are lapping up the drama.
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It all kicked off after the station shared a seemingly innocuous Instagram post promoting the band’s upcoming Australian tour.
Lead vocalist Matty Healy responded by screenshotting the post for his own Instagram story, with the caption, “Play our music then before you start licking our a**e just cos you’ve finally realised we’re mint.”
In a comment beneath the original post, he added: “Yeah play our f***ing music then you muppets.”
But it didn’t stop there.
Taking his fury to Twitter, Healy continued: “You literally have nothing to do with us coming to Australia; don’t start getting involved now. You don’t have a monopoly on cool and the head of your company is a k**bhead so yous can f**k off.”
It is unclear whether Healy was referring to the station’s group music director Richard Kingsmill, or someone higher up at the ABC.
Followers were left confused by the surge of animosity towards the radio station.
“Why are your feathers so ruffled this early in the morning Matthew,” one wrote, while another echoed: “Why are you beefing with unknowns at 7am Matty.”
“Yes king I don’t know what that means pop off,” another weighed in.
The 1975 announced the Australian and New Zealand legs of their ‘At Their Very Best’ world tour this week, kicking off next April in Perth, before dates in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
triple j, which has pivoted in recent years from playing mainly alternative music, has spun The 1975 a small amount of times since 2019, listeners pointed out on social media.
According to the Twitter account @triplejplays, triple j has been playing The 1975’s music since August 2019.
This year, the broadcaster has been favouring The 1975’s recent single Happiness, with it garnering fairly regular rotation in recent weeks.
It’s not the first time triple j has copped heat from artists for what many claim is biased airplay and elitism.
Notably, Wolfmother frontman Andrew Stockdale, whose music career was helped by the station in the band’s early days, has been kicking off against triple j for years.
The rocker first unleashed on the youth station after a tweet from the official account made mention of the band’s dwindling crowds at Splendour In The Grass 2012.
“Left wing conservatives sitting up in their offices on their government paid wages,” he fumed at a show in Sydney after the online swipe.
He went on to explain that triple j bosses “never paid attention to him and his early demos” until Wolfmother gained traction in the industry, adding that the station made it “cool to hate Wolfmother” as time went on.
Listeners have been increasingly critical of the station, too.
Last year, triple j was at the centre of a pile-on after a tweet gently mocking its demographic backfired spectacularly.
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The joke in question: “Did it hurt? When you aged out of the youth station,” did not go down well at all.
“Hurts more that someone from the @triplej social media team missed the famous ABC Inclusiveness Training day,” Bachelor host Osher Gunsberg wrote.
One passionate listener added: “Did it hurt? When you became a carbon copy of a top 40 station? When you became a caricature of yourself? When you lost what made triple j unique? When you just now turned your back on people who support you? No? I didn’t think so! Take a look at the people you just alienated.”
