The 1975 Interview

The 1975 have shot onto the music scene within the last 12 months, and frontman Matt Healy is the first to admit that it’s come about pretty quickly. In 2013, they supported the Rolling Stones, achieved a UK number one with their debut album and have amassed a fanbase around the world. As they get set to play their first shows in Australia for Big Day Out, we spoke to Matt to learn more about this enigmatic group and their fresh musical style.

Hi Matt, how are you?
I’m alright, how are you?

We’re very well, thanks! The 1975 had a crazy 2013; can you tell us what your biggest highlight was?
It’s hard to because when you look back at the year, we’ve gone from absolutely nothing, in a bedroom making records for ourselves, to supporting the Rolling Stones, playing the Royal Albert Hall and having a number one album – idealistic things that you don’t even have ambitions for that have happened in nine months – so to look back and pick one… I really don’t know. I mean, Mick Jagger at the side of the stage singing and dancing to your song and your Dad’s there – that’s a moment; Reading and Leeds was a culmination of everything that had happened over that festival season with regards to our band getting popular among that scene of kids. I haven’t had enough time to look back and see what everything we’ve done means.

Your [self-titled] debut album has been a massive success in the UK. After the popularity of singles ‘The City’, ‘Sex’ and ‘Chocolate’, did you expect it to do well?
We tried to stay away from it, but the reality was that we were playing a sold-out show every day in different countries around the world, so that does prove something. We’ve obviously stayed humble and we’ve just invested into our relationships with each other, but you do see your band growing, and then by the time it got to the album coming out, we’d done a marketing deal with a major label and they were coming back with statistics and they were like, “It looks like you could have it” and it turned out it went to number one. We were just proud that we were a band making music for the right reasons and that the album had gone to number one over albums that maybe weren’t as genuine a form of
creative expression. I thought that was cool and that was the main thing we took away from it.

Every song is so catchy and memorable; what sort of things do you draw on for lyrics and a tune?
I think it’s just my love of Pop music and a really strong melody. I’d never written music for anyone else or for anything other than this band before anyone had heard of us, so I was only writing to figure myself out. It was me expressing myself from an internal place but from Pop melodies that I love.

Are you influenced by genre?
Yeah, I mean, by Pop music I just mean music that we all love. But I’m a massive fan of music, and our knowledge has informed by everyone from Talking Heads, Grime-Emo, Michael Jackson, Boys II Men, TLC. An we’re massive fans of Usher, Jodeci and Fleetwook Mac. That’s what people of our generation are like and why people like our band, because we are quite representative of the new consumption of music.

It is quite difficult to put The 1975 into one genre…
I think that’s the whole point. There is a stylistic hilarity, but that’s not because we don’t know what we’re doing but because it’s a genuine extension of our personalities and our personalities have been informed by the generation that we’re from and the people we’re creating music for. People from our generation are going to have relatable ideas and I think it’s really difficult for major labels to understand it because they’re not from that place and they don’t understand what it is. Now it’s proven that people have really embraced it because it doesn’t need to be harboured. Nobody listens to just one type of music anymore, no 15-year-old girl that listens to Carol King can’t listen to Kendrick Lamar. The whole thing of being more ambiguous, that’s cool, just look at Tumblr. It just shows the generational gap and it’s interesting to be in a band at that time.

Apart from ‘Sex’, all your music videos are in black and white; is there a specific reason?
‘Girls’ is in colour as well, but that was more of a joke. Basically, the black and white thing is a stylistic tool, it’s cool and it’s nice and we like the idea that black and white detaches everything from reality and because we were together for so long but not up for exposing ourselves too much, we created this weird, little world and felt a bit safer.

Will you continue with black and white then? Is it your trademark?
I think we will do, but the whole colour situation is quite funny and that’s what the ‘Girls’ video was born out of. When we did the video for ‘Sex’, we looked at it in colour and then in black and white and it looked better in colour. Our fans really kicked off about it and thought we were conforming to a major label and it couldn’t have been further from the truth. I think the reason people liked us was because there’s an amount of unpredictability.

You’re a Manchester band, an area that’s given us The Smiths, Oasis and The Stone Roses. Do you feel like the city has influenced your musical preferences and sound because of previous bands it’s produced?
We certainly do respect those bands, but we weren’t remotely informed by any of their music. I mean, I wasn’t brought up in Manchester until I was about 12, same with George (drummer), so I grew up on like Soul music, Motown, Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack. Our geographical location isn’t very inspiring and we don’t like the idea of anyone being judged
on where they’re from, so I think that’s partially why we’ve been embraced. I don’t think anyone really cares about it anymore, well, I don’t.

Does The 1975 have anything to do with that actual time?
Not at all. I got given a book once and someone had written in it, I think it was like a diary, but it had been dated 1st June The 1975, quite a lot of times, and it stuck in my head because it’s quite an interesting use of language. So when we were thinking of the band, I just thought it was a good name. I also like how it makes it sound more important than just 1975, the “The” is the important bit. It had nothing to do with anything, any dates or anything, I didn’t even understand it.

Your British fans will get the chance to see you in Australia at Big Day Out in January, what should they expect from your set?
I suppose a correlation between the album and the live shows. The album’s very uplifting and makes you think a little bit, hopefully, in very simple terms. The live show is quite fun. In our early shows, it was about letting the crowd in, because The 1975 was very minimalist and closed off and it was the first time people could see us in colour.

Will it be your first time playing in Australia?
It will be our first visit, but I lived there for like two years when I was a baby. But apart from that we’ve never been. It will be our first time playing there as a band so we can’t wait, it’s going to be massive. And because we’ll be playing Big Day Out we’ll be flying all over the place so we can’t wait.

By Charlotte Mellor