Matt Siegel is back in Boston this Wednesday for “An Evening with Matty in the Morning” at the Wilbur Theatre and he is using a new Boston Globe “Say More” interview to apologize for the messy end of his 41-year run on Kiss 108.
He says he “f---- up,” stayed in “crazy-land,” and wants to make amends. He does not recant the gender-identity jokes that started the fight. Siegel hosted Matty in the Morning from 1981 until May 2022.
The public rupture began in 2021, when management told him to stop joking about Demi Lovato’s pronouns after the singer came out as nonbinary. He answered with an on-air monologue attacking the station, then walked out.
“I had this thing in my head where, ‘Don’t tell me what to do, I’m Matty in the Morning,’” he told the Globe. “Which translates to: ‘Don’t tell me what to do. I’m an idiot.’” A prerecorded retirement message later cited health and family.
“The woke thing went too far,” he said. “And my personal belief, [is] that’s why Trump is president.”
He also says the punishment outran the offense. After he moved to Florida during the pandemic, an HR complaint from Donovan followed on-air remarks about her son’s school and its gender policies. “It’s one thin to poke fun at Demi Lovato. It’s another thing to poke fun at the school that my [radio] partner’s son goes to.”
He lost the job and, he says, his best friends. Costa and Donovan will not take his calls. That is the human core of the comeback. Siegel thinks a plane ticket to Boston might have fixed it. He is sad, still angry that repeated apologies have not reopened the door, and headed to the Wilbur anyway. He told the Globe the live show will skip politics. The radio chapter is closed. The argument about how it closed is not.