Earlier this year, I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It saw the band shoot to the top of the album charts in Australia, New Zealand, The UK and The US. Since then, The 1975 have been playing sold out tours around the world, yet despite this massive commercial success, frontman Matthew Healy says they are still all about the music.
“We had no kind of careerist motives, because we were like 13. We were just playing music because of the purity of playing, for the same reason we played football or video games, which we still do. It wasn’t until we were like 17 – 18 when we realised that maybe we could actually do something,” says Healy. “It was about the act of making music, making those kinds of sounds with your friends. It wasn’t about getting girls or being cool, it was just a fun thing to do and it turned into what it is today.
“I’m constantly in awe of things that happen, whether it be how high we get billed at festivals or how many people come to our shows or just the opportunity to do what we do live. I’m constantly having to remind myself of how amazing it is. The album going to #1 in America was something we’d never dreamed of, it’s not something that ever seemed realistic. And it happened.”
Debuting at #1 on the ARIA album chart, The 1975 have strong support in Australia, and will be heading here next month for their highly anticipated Splendour In The Grass slot.
“I always say that everybody’s similar – it seems like we play to a similar group of kids every night – but Australia is particularly different,” says Healy. “Australia is louder. Australia is more intense. I don’t know whether it’s because we’re so far away and you’re starved of shows. It’s not like your favourite band, if they’re not from Australia, is going to be knocking around, whereas that could be the case with New York or London or Paris. The people are excitable and I love playing shows in Australia.”
Audiences on the upcoming tour will be treated to a new audio visual element of their show, specifically designed to accompany the new album. “When we toured last time we realised how much of an emotional investment people had with our music and how involved they were with it,” says Healy. “I wanted to visualise that, to try and stimulate people visually, like the way they are stimulated musically. I think it’s beautiful.
“There’s everything on that record. I talked about the fundamentals of what I was scared of, or what made me think. There are songs on there about my mother’s post natal depression or the death of my grandmother. When you talk about those things in the context of music or whatever it may be, you allow people to feel the same way. You kind of give people permission to – not necessarily grieve with you – you give people permission to feel the same way as you,” he says. “I like that. It makes you feel more accepted as a person when people relate to it. I try not to get lost in self pity and just talk about how it feels.”
It’s not only the album’s themes that have caused a stir. Healy says that the lengthy title has also evoked quite a reaction, but it was a deliberate decision.
“It was just a lyric. We named the record a long time ago and it was during a time when we wanted to make bold decisions. We wanted to make a record that was about conviction. It wasn’t necessarily the best lyric or the most appropriate lyric, but at one point we said ‘let’s call the album that. If it’s called that, it’s already ridiculous and we don’t have to worry about it being overly ambitious’,” laughs Healy. “We got a lot of shit for it – but as they say, there’s no such thing as bad press. I just think if we are going to make big albums and be in the charts, we are going to do it on our own terms.”
Posting to their social media pages at the time of the release, The 1975 described the creation of the follow up to their debut as the most inspiring and challenging time they’d ever shared. “Obviously we’d been writing on the road, but because we were still touring the first album we were still in that time frame, we were still in that world. We came off tour and went straight into the process of making our next record and I think that time it was quite overwhelming,” he says.
“The silence of coming off tour was something to get used to in itself – going back home and getting used to not being onstage every night is a weird thing to try and figure out. Trying to be creative in a timeframe is very difficult and I think we got stuck in our heads a little bit; we started to kind of freak out. But it was eventually reconciled and we managed to make the best record we’ve ever made,” says Healy.
“We were on tour for a good few years. Missing your bed and missing all of that kind of shit that you think about goes quite quickly, you find comfort and consistency in different things. We used to make records on a laptop in a bedroom and then it changed to a tour bus or a hotel, so it wasn’t too different as long as we had each other. We don’t have to go into a zen environment to make a record.”
The group also recently unveiled a brand new music clip for their single, A Change Of Heart. “I realised there was a sexuality to almost all of the videos we’d ever done,” says Healy. “I wanted to take a song that was in that realm and make a video that was plutonic and pretty and beautiful. I wanted to have innocence to my character. I love Charlie Chaplin and Michael Jackson and I just had them in my head. Michael Jackson was the first person that I saw live, he was my world growing up. He was the main thing I was interested in. I grew up watching videos of him; he was my hero and then that led into me musically.”
Often trading his laptop for a typewriter to communicate with his audience, Healy shared his production plan for the video via an inked stained letter.
“I like using typewriters because I like the ceremony of it. Patti Smith says every writer should have a typewriter. When you’ve got a pencil, you can rub it out or when you’re on a computer you can delete it but when you write on a typewriter there’s a certain amount of commitment to it. It just makes you concentrate and think a bit more about what you’re doing,” he says. “I think we’re in a time where everything is so cyclical, you see people yearning for more analogue ways of expressing themselves.”
Healy is unwaveringly faithful in the future progression of The 1975 and leaves us with his thoughts on the pressure of preparing their next album.
“It’s all about belief – whether you believe in it or not, or believe that person or not,” says Healy. “There’s a great quote by David Foster Wallace where he says, ‘You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realise how seldom they do.’ I think that’s what you’ve got to think about when making a record.”
BY PHOEBE ROBERTSON
