Newsweek - USA (2020-07-03)

JULY 03, 2020

Culture

48

Illustration by BRITT SPENCER

the 1975’s fans are obsessed with “every f***ing song” by

the pop/rock band, says lead singer Matty Healy. That gives the band no

reason to backtrack over content they’ve already created on topics from politics

to climate change, addiction and religion. But their latest album, Notes On A

Conditional Form, released May 22, dives even deeper with a breath of added

vulnerability. Notes’ first single was a hard-rock rager titled “People,” followed

by “Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America,” an acoustic track that speaks to strict

religious views on sexuality. The band topped off their pre-releases with the

bubbly “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know), which fans have already declared

one of the band’s best thus far. “By now, I expect people expect the unexpected

to a certain extent with us,” Healy told Newsweek. “Our first [self-titled, con-

cept-driven] album is still the odd one out. I think if we’d gone from the EPs to

the second album to the third album to the fourth album, this idea of having

no genre would have made total sense from the beginning.”

Matty Healy

In Notes and your last album,

you’ve become more political.

Greta Thunberg is even featured on

Notes. What makes you so willing

to push those topics as a band?

The best artists, in my opinion, kind of

held a mirror up to the world around

them. Artists have shown me how to

aspire to live, more so than politicians

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record or my second record, I was

just taking up space if I wasn’t making

meaningful art.

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potentially ending as a musical

entity, but you continue.

I think that comes from any writer’s

desire for a good ending. This record

very much felt like it was going to

be some kind of resolve, like some

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end of The Graduate. It’s more about

new beginnings, and it’s more about

reality and it’s more about that there

isn’t, kind of, ribbons to put on time.

You’re about to release this album

in the middle of a pandemic.

It already has some lyrics that

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going outside. Have these songs

developed different meaning for

you in the current times?

Yeah. But also, it’s all the same s***

now. I think I was saying, if we don’t

change, something is going to make

us change. The record just feels

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feels prophetic. —Kelly Wynne

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shown me how

to aspire to live,

more so than

politicians or

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PARTING SHOT