The 1975 – The 1975

Some of you will probably know The 1975. And I could easily choose one of their later, musically even more ambitious albums. Yet I keep coming back to their debut. Perhaps precisely because here you can hear a band exploring everything it might become.

The sum of their musical youth

“The 1975” was released on 2 September 2013. By then, Matty Healy, George Daniel, Adam Hann and Ross MacDonald had already been playing together for around eleven years. They had gone through different band names and musical phases; Matty had even started out on drums. The debut is therefore less the beginning of a band than the sum of their shared musical youth.

And that is exactly what you hear. Indie rock, pop, electronics, funk, big guitars, synthesizers, quiet instrumental interludes: sometimes all within a few minutes. “Chocolate” is buoyant indie pop, “Sex” pushes forward much harder, “Settle Down” combines funk guitar, synthesizers and a wonderful groove, while “Robbers” suddenly becomes big, dark and almost cinematic.

For me, this gives the album something many meticulously produced records lack: breadth and depth, with plenty of rock all the same. You can tell that The 1975 are still exploring where they really want to go. At the same time, a surprising amount of what would later define the band is already there.

Variety as their trademark

One of my favourite stories about it: this very stylistic breadth was initially their problem. Manager Jamie Oborne spent years trying to find a label for the band. The answer kept coming back that the songs sounded too different and nobody knew how to fit something like that onto the radio. Eventually, Dirty Hit effectively became the label through which they could release their own music. The supposed problem became their trademark, and the debut went on to reach number one in the UK album charts.

In terms of its themes, however, the album is remarkably cohesive. It explores youth, sex, love, friendship, drugs, break-ups and that stage of life when every relationship and every downfall seems like the most important event in the world. Healy later described that phase rather aptly as “apocalyptic teenage romance”.

Afterwards: Love It If We Made It

And for anyone who wants to keep listening after the debut, there is one song from their third album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships from 2018, that I really want to recommend: “Love It If We Made It”.

For me, one of The 1975’s truly great songs. Over a considerable period, Healy collected newspaper headlines and events in society: Trump, Kanye West, the refugee crisis, the death of Lil Peep and much more. Rather than turning them into a conventional political message, he created a kind of feverish news stream of our times. Healy described the hope in the song as a small glimmer of hope among all the rubble.

Musically, the song is immense: driving, electronic, almost industrial, and yet with one of those choruses that keeps growing bigger. Brian Eno is even said to have remarked later that he wished he had written the song.

The 1975 are a wonderful band. But if I could keep only one of their records, it would probably be this first one. Not despite the fact that they are still searching for their sound, but perhaps precisely because of it.

What stays with me

More than a first impression

And afterwards, make sure you listen to “Love It If We Made It” as well. Loud. 🎶🔊