The Guardian’s deputy music editor said she was “gobsmacked” when the frontman of the Brit Award-winning band The 1975 used an acceptance speech to share her comments on misogyny in the UK music industry.
Singer Matty Healy quoted from an article by Laura Snapes when accepting the gong for Best British Group at the awards show last night.
He said: “I just want you to listen to me for one sec, just a couple of sentences. A friend of ours, Laura Snapes, said this and I just thought that we should all really think about it.
“She said that, in music, ‘male misogynist acts are examined for nuance and defended as traits of difficult artists while women and those who call them out are treated as hysterics who don’t understand art’.”
Snapes first wrote the words in 2015 after she interviewed the singer of folk rock band Sun Kil Moon and he subsequently called her a “bitch” on stage in London.
She said the singer “can use sexually violent language to reduce female critics to the status of groupies” because of the way the industry treats men and men and women differently.
Snapes then restated her comments last week after musician Ryan Adams was accused of emotional abuse and sexual misconduct, writing that the “concept of male genius insulates against all manner of sin”.
In response to the claims against him, first reported by the New York Times, Adams said “the picture that this article paints is upsettingly inaccurate”. He added: “Some of its details are misrepresented, some are exaggerated, some are outright false.”
Snapes said on Twitter last night that she was “gobsmacked, and honoured” that Healy would “use his platform to make this statement”.
Writing in the Guardian today, she added that it was “bracing” to have her words read out on stage, but that the music industry “needs actions, not words, if it is to let female talent flourish”.
Snapes wrote: “Setting aside the fact that hearing a pop star mention your name during an awards ceremony is fairly discombobulating, hearing a leading male rock artist decry the systems that have historically buoyed their career while pointing out the double standards that women face – in front of the music industry that sustains those dynamics – felt remarkable.”
Picture: Reuters/Hannah McKay
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