Rina Sawayama calls out Matt Healy for racism and xenophobia, and reveals that he owns her masters!? Also, what is ‘masters’?

So, Matt Healy has been trending and turning up in news feeds lately for everything other his music. First it was kissing fans (including a male fan) on stage. Then it was being racist and xenophobic on a podcast. Then it was ‘dating’ that white woman with the clock album before her ex Joe Alwyn could even book the U-Haul to pick up his stuff from the house.

If truth be told, Matt Healy has always caught flack for something or other, primarily his general demeanour. He interviews VERY badly, and always comes off like an asshole. And it turns out it’s because he just is one. And now Matt Healy is catching heat once again as a result of some public comments made by Rina Sawayama, who during her Glastonbury set addressed the audience and had this to say...

I’m sick and tired of these micro aggressions. So tonight, 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!

The cherry on top being that Rina said this during the intro to “STFU”, a song about dealing with racism and xenophobia. A topic of which was also addressed in the music video.

If you’re wondering what ‘Ghetto gaggers’ is, as I did. Don’t Google it. I was fortunately unfortunate to come across a Twitter thread which had the answer. The mild answer (if you can even call this that) is that it is a type of porn in which Black women are humiliated. The podcast Rina is referring to is The Adam Friedland Show.

Who woulda thought podcasts would be the reason for downfalls in this day and age? Jebus Christ.

The part of the podcast I’m assuming Rina took offense to specifically, was the discussion about Japanese people working in concentration camps and then Matt mocking the voice of a Japanese person. Matt’s comments on this podcast was widely reported at the time, and continued to stay in circulation following the reports of him dating Taylor Swift, with her fans asking ‘Girl, why him after what he said!?’. But the shock of what Rina said was the revelation that Matt Healy owned Rina Sawayama’s masters, which collectively had everybody say ‘WHAT? HUH? HOW!?’. Me included.

So, what I have gathered, is that each member of The 1975 is a shareholder in Dirty Hit, the label Rina Sawayama is signed to. When artists sign a record deal, they usually end up signing away their rights and ownership of their masters to the record label. Which in Rina’s case, would be Dirty Hit, and by proxy, the shareholders. So, Matt Healy, amongst others.

Masters have become a hot topic within the pop zeitgeist over the past couple of years. But what is ‘masters’?

A Master refers to the original sound recording of a song. And whoever owns the rights to these masters controls where that original recording ends up commercially. So, in Rina’s case, it would mean that Dirty Hit control whether original recordings of hers end up in a film, in a TV show, in a video games, in a TV commercial, etc. And any money which comes as a result of the commercial use of the song doesn’t all go directly to Rina herself. The biggest chunk goes to the owner(s) of the masters.

You may have heard about Taylor Swift re-recording her older albums and re-releasing them. And her not owning the masters to the original releases of the albums is the reason why. A topic which became news and something so big that it has its own damn Wikipedia page.

With Taylor not owning the masters of everything she recorded up until her sixth studio album Reputation, she has no control of where any of her songs end up being used. And it would also mean an additional cut of the pie from all of the revenue from sales and streams going to somebody else, i.e the owners of the masters. Hence why we’re getting releases of older albums dubbed ‘Taylor’s Version’ with re-recordings of each song. Although another part of what resulted in this was Scooter Braun buying the record label she was once signed to, with whom she had beef. Which means he now owns all of the masters of songs she recorded whilst signed to it.

It’s convoluted and a bit messy, but hopefully this makes sense.

But what if you wrote a song? Does this not mean you own the master? Nope. If you are the writer of a song, you do not automatically own the rights to the master of it. You just own the rights to the words and the melody. So for example. If Jordan Peele turned around and said ‘I wanna have somebody sing the melody and hook of “XS” for the trailer of my next film’, this wouldn’t require any approval from the owners of the masters, because this wouldn’t use the original recording of the song. It would just require approval from the writers, which in this case would be Rina and the three other people she wrote “XS” with.

This is also a similar situation to sampling vs. interpolations.

• Interpolations require the approval of the publishers of the song (pretty much the company who represent and manage the business admin for songwriters).
• Sampling requires the approval from whomever owns the masters to the song.

And the above is why Beyoncé was able to interpolate and sample certain songs for her album Renaissance without the artists of these songs ever knowing until the album dropped. Because the artist or the writers never needs to be asked permission or notified unless they happen to own either the publishing rights or the masters.

The discussion of masters, artists not owning their own work and fighting to own them is something which goes all the way back before compact discs chile. It’s how labels make their money. Artists signed to Motown fought over the rights of their music when they realised they didn’t own it, and how much money they weren’t making despite the success of ‘their’ music. Nina Simone fought over the rights of her music and pulled a gun on a man over it. Taylor Swift’s situation with her masters is probably the biggest and most publicised instance within the past decade. But back in the 80s and 90s, Prince was this person. Prince famously and very publicly beefed with Warner Bros. for years over his recording contract and the rights to his masters - which is what resulted in him changing his name to that symbol and all of the foolery of him refusing to speak in interviews, and pulling up to public events with ‘slave’ written on his face.

Artist ownership has always been contentious and something artists have had to fight for, in every medium. It’s an important discussion. Especially at this point in time where art ownership in general is under attack, whether it be because of A.I or a lack of support and understanding from the powers that be, of how much a persons art and being able to own it actually means to them. Because all they care about is the money to be made. They don’t give a fuck about ethics or integrity.

But what I hope doesn’t get lost in this discussion is why Rina chose to call Matt Healy out in the first place. Her issue first and foremost wasn’t that he owned her masters. It was the fact that Matt Healy was on podcasts being a xenophobic and racist piece of shit, and that this happens to be the person who has shares in the record label she is signed to, and therefore owns her masters.

Rina has always been vocal about the weapons that try to prosper against her. She called out the BPI for shutting her out of award nominations for BRITs and Mercury Prizes back in 2020, which caused #SAWAYAMAISBRITISH to trend on Twitter, gain support and spark such conversation, that it resulted in them changing their rules around eligibility. So, calling out some greasy haired man who doesn’t brush his teeth ain’t shit to Rina. And as is the case when anybody advocates for a wider cause, it has benefits for others too. Dirty Hit has two other Asians acts signed to its label; Beabadoobee and No Rome, who I’m sure didn’t appreciate hearing that Matt Healy was mocking Asians. So Rina speaking up is a win for them too.

Sawayama (Rina’s Version) and Hold the Girl (Rina’s Version), WHEN? It’d actually give her and her producers a chance to fix a lot of the mixing issues across both albums. And a chance to re-release the singles she never got to the first time around. Give “Comme Des Garçons (Like The Boys)” the video it deserves. Releasing “Paradisin’” as a single. Shoot a video for “Imagining”.

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💿 Rina reviews: Hold the Girl | This Hell | Sawayama | Rina
📀 Rina revision: Sawayama (The Random J Pop Revised Expanded Edition)