Earlier this year, the 1975 released the long awaited second album, I like it when you sleep you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, and while it was a album full of prodigious songs that showed the depths of levels and variety this band is able expand upon, there was one song that left an impression that no other song did.
When you're presented with an album that has 17 tracks, it might be hard to find just one that stands out above the rest, but when I heard the track entitled Loving Someone, track 11, I knew instantly this song was my absolute favorite off the album, and probably of all time.
The song starts off with the line "my heart is telling me the telly isn't telling me anything I need, but it needs to keep selling me" which quickly draws the attention to what entertainment has become and this becomes even more detailed when the following lines say, "Besides celebrities lacking in integrity, holding up the status quo instead of showing the kids, that they matter, Who are they gonna batter next?" Lines that insinuate that the media perpetuates the ideal of living up to superficial image rather than an honorable one.
The verse than continues to discuss the idea of heternormativity and how it's perpetuated in media and how much it's reinforced. I believe the current and future generations will be able to become a more inclusive group of individuals who won't let sexuality define us and won't feel as if the media should be the ones who raise the youth of today. This message of dismissing heteronormativity is even more defined when seeing the song performed live due to the fact the lighting for this show is done with the theme of the pride flag, something that started after the shooting at Pulse, but then continued afterwards.
The second verse starts with a line that is the overall message of the entire song, "we're all humans, we're just like you man, we're sentient, we're something you know I really can't remember, whatever" A powerful statement delivered with a detached approach that makes it all that much more empowering. Despite what happens throughout the day, by the end of it, we're all the same and we need treat each other as such.
It's followed by "Charlatan telepathy exploiting insecurity and praying on the purity, of grief and its simplicity but I know that maybe I'm too skeptical, even Guy Debord needed spectacles," and then finished with "I'm the Greek economy of cashing intellectual cheques, and I'm trying to progress, but instead of selling sex...and I think I should be... loving someone," along with being clever word play, it also examines the idea of how the lead singer evaluates himself because he believes he should be loving someone, and that someone could be himself. You should be loving someone, and it's okay if that someone is yourself.
You could say I'm a bit bias yes, seeing how this is my favorite song, but I think this song is one that details what we should be doing as a society and standard ideals that need changing, and at the end of the day, we should be loving someone.
