Do we like Yuna?
Our score: 7 out of 10. A clean record with real backbone and some charity, but the sources are thin on LGBTQ+ topics, so we stop short of the top end.
Yuna is a Malaysian singer-songwriter who has built an international R&B and pop career. She is a devout hijab-wearing Muslim in a business that doesn't always know what to do with that. In NME in 2022 she said she would have quit years ago if she cared about the online comments, and that Malaysia is still home.
Her fans are a mixed lot. She told a US paper in 2016 that her shows draw Muslims, Jews, Asian-Americans and Hispanics, and she preferred to show tolerance rather than preach it. She said she hated preaching about how we need to come together. It's a gentle, show-don't-tell approach.
The nasty bit of her story is what was done to her. In 2018 she publicly appealed to Instagram for help over what she described as about six months of sexual comments from an anonymous account that kept returning under new names. She said she had blocked the person ten times, and she asked the platform to act.
On the harm test, there's nothing to wince at. In 2020 she joined Blackout Tuesday to stand in solidarity with Black artists against racism. She also linked George Floyd's death to discrimination she and her husband said they had faced as Muslims and people of colour in the US. We found no statement from her on LGBTQ+ people, and no dodgy co-stars or conspiracy slide, so it's a clean but thin record on that front.
Her Palestine stance is where she has put her own career on the line. NST reported in September 2025 that she said she had lost jobs, friends and more than 4,000 followers. She also said overseas gig offers dried up. Where you land depends on your view of the politics, but she acted on it at real cost to herself, and she has said she remains hopeful.
The good stuff is practical. In 2020 she did a lockdown concert in which part of her fees were to go to a food bank and a medical crowdfunding platform. In 2024 she said Instagram disabled the account promoting a charity football match to raise funds for Palestine, which she was helping with. Both are small acts, but they were real ones.