After I finished my first installment of Someone Explain This Band to Me with Twenty One Pilots, I knew that I would probably tackle The 1975 next, and what time more fitting than after NME gave the band they once named the worst the Best Album of 2016 designation.
Let us just start with this right away: two years ago at the NME Awards, The 1975 won the Worst Band Award. Since then, NME is no longer a magazine you can buy in a shop but have to pick up for free in one of a handful of locations, and their general level of respect from readers has fallen. Putting all that 2014 award in the past, NME named The 1975’s album I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It (I do not even have an eyeroll big enough for that title) the Best Album of 2016 in their end of the year list. But, why? NME doesn’t seem to care.
When The 1975 were first picking up popularity during their self-titled debut album in 2013, I gave them a chance. I listened to their first single “Sex” and didn’t hate the music all that much, but then frontman Matthew "Matty" Healy’s voice became one of the most grating things I have had the misfortune of experiencing. It’s like if The Kooks’ Luke Pritchard managed to be worse, and I’ve somehow seen The Kooks live twice. But I was in a benevolent mood and gave them a few more opportunities to win me over.
On paper, The 1975 have the influences and musical style that should win me over, but that moment never came. The music video for “Girls” is aggravating with some attempt at humor. “We’re not a pop band,” Healy declares during the attempt at an acting intro (no, you are), and this song really sealed the fact I cannot stand his voice. Fellow band members, Adam Hann (guitar), Ross MacDonald (bass), and George Daniel (drums) are pretty decent musically, but that voice is terrible. Pretty sure there aren’t any actual lyrics in “Chocolate.” Are there? He said “chocolate” a few times, and that seems to be about it with a variety of strange sounds to add variety. To sum it up, listening to The 1975 feels like when Michael Scott got his foot burned in the George Foreman Grill on The Office. Confusing and painful yet also hilarious how bad the experience is with a little bit of embarrassment.
Also, it is important to throw out that their video for “Robbers” in 2014 was already done three years earlier by Arctic Monkeys for “Suck It and See.” The premise and imagery feels incredibly similar with a band member named Matthew hanging out with a beautiful woman in a desert motel as they take part in certain antics and frolicking. Was this The 1975’s audition piece to be the next NME boyfriends just in case the magazine and Alex Turner part ways? Please, listen to Arctic Monkeys instead and look towards Alex Turner if you really need to fawn over a frontman who tries to be cool but comes off embarrassing sometimes.
When second album My Title Is Long and Eyeroll Inducing and You Are So Aware of It came out at the beginning of 2016, it did seem like the band finally embraced the fact that they are pop, and I can respect that much from them. Sadly, The 1975 continue to sound like the lovechild between The Kooks and The Neighbourhood that nobody really ever wanted yet somehow we have. I will admit that "Somebody Else" is the closest I have come to enjoying a song by the band. Lead single "Love Me" did not make me love The 1975, though. I resent the single "UGH!" because now I cannot even say it without thinking about how a band I truly loathe has a song with the name. Nothing is sacred.
Now, to some extent, I can understand that fans probably see frontman Matty Healy as a wonderful musician and artist who writes great songs and is emotional and doesn’t hold back his thoughts about fame and the world and whatever. He just sounds like the pretentious guy who always insisted on making a comment he thought was really deep and insightful in literature, philosophy, or political science classes. Good for us that Healy knows he’s pretentious and is “not apologizing” for it. Well, at least he’s self-aware. Each subsequent interview that happens with Matt Healy (does the rest of the band speak?) makes him more unlikable. I get it, you take your art very seriously, and I can respect that, but also, every single song you create does not qualify as the most significant contribution to humanism. He has the attitude of someone who appears fairly well educated with a desire to continue learning about global issues, yet he gets so caught up in his grand self-beliefs opinions that when he stumbles, it’s pretty bad. One instance, a Twitter debacle in which he tweeted about ISIS, and then when a young Muslim girl running a Harry Styles fan replied, Healy responded “I resent being ‘educated’ by a Harry Styles fan account.” Since then he’s worked on righting his wrong, but some damage has been done. While I don’t always believe a band’s music should be judged by what a member says, it becomes difficult to ignore Matty Healy when he constantly just exudes such a pompous attitude.
The band also stated that their stage setup was designed to look and feel like a Tumblr page. If you just heard a sound in the distance, that is me screaming. Again, at least The 1975 are aware majority of their fanbase lives on Tumblr and it would be nice to give them a familiar environment at a show. But that does lead to one of the things I do find fascinating about The 1975. The thin line the band treads between alternative/rock band and pop band that they finally allowed to admit was pop band and the amount of crossover they have with the likes of One Direction. Putting aside the differences of actually playing their instruments, writing their music, and not being placed in a group through reality television, One Direction and The 1975 rely heavily on young fans. Young female fans that get so often disregarded as mere “fangirls” are what circulated the word about The 1975 and got them radio play and popularity while also supporting them dominantly in crowds at shows. While this made sense for the boy band, it’s a bit strange for the black and white aesthetic and edgy 1975. Do The 1975 represent what popular boy bands will now be?
