felt his hidden habit
eating away at his
relationships, it didn’t
derail the band, nor his
relationship with his
“incredibly wise and
incredibly beautiful”
girlfriend, Australian
actress and model
Gabriella Brooks. He
knew what he had to
lose. “I still risked it,”
he says, “but it took me
being in one of the most
divisive, exciting bands
in the world to make me
stop doing drugs for a
little bit at a time.”
As becomes obvious
when he rolls a joint,
Healy’s recovery is
not abstinence-based.
He has only ever been
addicted to “The Big
One” and is fully com-
mitted to recovery,
volunteering to take
weekly drug tests in
front of his bandmates.
He says it’s going to be
“something I struggle
with for the rest of my
life.” Five turbulent
years into his stardom,
Healy has reached some
important conclusions
about where to ind
self-esteem.
“I thought it would
be like, ‘Ooh, a bit of
gold, a Rolls-Royce’ — I
never had a Rolls-Royce
— ‘drugs with a pop star,
shag that pop star’ — I
didn’t shag any pop stars
— all of the trappings of
a music video,” he says.
“And what you realize
is the pursuit of happi-
ness is this Sisyphean
thing for most people.
Thinking that the goal
is to be happy is a bit
mad. It’s more about
leeting moments of joy
and knowing that life
is hard.” He looks reso-
lute, like he’s reciting a
mantra. “Self-esteem
requires esteemable
actions. Telling the
truth. I think this focus
on truth is what’s in the
record.”WHILE WE ARE
talking, The 1975’s new
single goes live. Healy
considers reading the
reactions online but
decides against it. “Love
It If We Made It” is a
rolling chyron of the
world in 2018, taking
in Black Lives Matter,
refugees, social media,
the death of Lil Peep
and direct quotes from
Donald Trump. Many
would call it a protest
song, though Healy is
dubious. “Hopefully
it could be used on a
montage for the times,
but it’s not going to
change the times,” he
says. “It doesn’t provide
a solution.”
Healy is uneasy
around explicit political
statements. On June 24,
2016, the day after the
British public voted
for Brexit, The 1975
played the Glastonbury
Festival. Healy made a
passionate speech about
older voters stealing the
younger generation’s
future, but then quali-
ied it with a joke about
being just a pop star in a
white suit, so why listen
to him?
The singer ties
himself in knots trying
to make a point about
the wider political
discourse, but his gist
seems to be that intoler-
ance for nuance, contextand ambiguity ends up
making many topics too
radioactive to discuss. “I
think there’s a big fear
of saying ‘I don’t know,’
and there’s a big fear of
apologizing in public,”
he says, frowning. “I’m
not dying on any hills
because I don’t really
know [enough], but I’m
an artist, and these are
the things I talk about.
It’s kind of a discus-
sion between me and
the world, even though
that might sound a bit
egotistical.”
That discussion no
longer takes place on
social media, where,
after some contentious
tweets about religion
in 2014, Healy now
sticks to promoting
The 1975. It did, how-
ever, appear on walls
and billboards in major
cities around the world
in May. The band’s
brazen prerelease
marketing campaign for
“Give Yourself a Try”
deployed situationist-
style slogans such as
“Modernity has failed
us” and “First dis-
obey; then look at your
phones.” “We all know
how addictive the phone
is, but when it’s brought
up, it’s boring,” says
Healy. “It’s almost like
Brexit or Trump now:
‘We know, Granddad,
we know!’ But we don’t
really want to do any-
thing to change it.”It is typical of the
band’s audacity to
launch such an ambi-
tious teaser campaign
long before an album
is inished. Manager
Oborne says that whenpondering their next
move, they ask them-
selves, “What would
The 1975 do?” The
answer is, always act
boldly.
Healy says that thecampaign conveys some
of the thinking behind
the album, but not the
sincerity. In the past,
he has been prone to
subverting a beautiful
melody with an irrever-
ent, self-aware twist.
He’s trying to do less
of that. “All the best
records are about life in
an all-consuming way,
and that’s what I hopethis record is about,”
he says. “We live in a
weirdly postmodern
time, and I don’t have
that many solutions, but
what I know doesn’t have
solutions is irony. After
a while you start to hide
behind it, because it’s
easier than being truly
human, which is being a
bit naive, a bit soppy.”
For a year or so, Healy“I DON’T WANT TO FETISHIZE [HEROIN,
BECAUSE IT’S REALLY DULL AND
IT’S REALLY DANGEROUS.” —Healy42 BILLBOARD AUGUST 4, 2018