Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke speaks out after ‘Pigwig’ promo drew racist and homophobic comments
Kele Okereke said the abuse isn’t something he’s really experienced before. (Getty Images)
Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke has said his team “were having to work overtime to delete lots of racist and homophobic comments” after a promo clip for the band’s song ‘Pigwig’ went viral.
Speaking on Miquita Oliver’s Miss Me? podcast, Okereke said he got a call from his management after the clip took off online. “We put out a song called ‘Pigwig’, and I got a call from my management saying that there had been a viral [thing] and they were having to work overtime to delete lots of racist and homophobic comments,” he said.
Okereke said it was “something I had never really experienced before”.
What did Kele Okereke say about the ‘Pigwig’ backlash?
Okereke linked the spike in abuse to how exposed he feels on Bloc Party’s latest record, Anatomy Of A Brief Romance. He said being “intensely personal” in his lyrics had opened him up to “a nastiness that I’ve never experienced before in all my years of doing this”.
He also drew a clear line between criticism and abuse. “I’m fully aware that as a musician, people are entitled to not like what we do, I get that,” he said. “I don’t want to presume that I’m immune from criticism, but I don’t think me being visible means that I need to be subject to abuse. But that’s the world now…”
Okereke added that he has “known from the start that there will be people that do not want to see a brown face fronting an indie band”, but said he had never “felt that kind of kickback” until the response to the ‘Pigwig’ clip.
What is ‘Pigwig’, and what’s next for Bloc Party?
‘Pigwig’ is the fourth single from Anatomy Of A Brief Romance, following ‘Coming On Strong’, ‘Love Bombs’, and ‘Now We Can’t Be Friends’. The promo in question appears to be an Instagram promo clip.
Okereke is gay and has long been one of the most visible queer frontmen in UK indie rock. Bloc Party, known for their dance-punk energy and sharp songwriting, broke through during the 2000s indie boom, with Silent Alarm still widely regarded as a landmark album of the era.
Bloc Party are currently sharing top billing with Interpol on a UK and European tour, which began in Copenhagen on Tuesday 10 November 2026.
Online pile-ons targeting queer people are not new. In 2020, BBC LGBT+ correspondent Ben Hunte said he and his loved ones were sent “racist and homophobic abuse” after Laurence Fox included a photo of him in a tweet.
