If anyone shouldn’t “get it,” it’s Matty Healy. He looks like a dirtbag. A greasy mop of hair sits atop his head, he holds his cigarettes like a flamboyant aristocrat, and he talks about “the internet” in interviews like a pretentious philosophy student. You all know the one. Yet there’s a magnetism to Matty Healy that draws people, especially younger people, to his music. Quite a few musicians are making music about being young in the 21st century — The 1975, with Healy at the front, has far and away been the most successful. Yeah, their lead singer looks like a pretentious dirtbag. But he just “gets it.”
For me and millions of other people growing up in the internet age, The 1975 have been a formative band. I was sixteen when their album “A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships” came out, an album that among other things explored what it’s like to fall in love in the digital age. For myself and many, the first time we fell in love was soundtracked by The 1975. My generation is jaded by the internet, our mind’s eye is dilated by the extreme overexposure created by our computers. We’ve come to reject traditional cliches because we’ve seen it all before. So when we hear a song like “It’s Not Living If It’s Not With You,” a song about heroin addiction disguised as a cliche pop love song, we can’t help but fall in love with it.
This juxtaposition of themes and sound is an idea that Healy has been plucking at his whole career. The 1975 has never been just a pop band or just a rock band — or just anything. They’ve dabbled in genres ranging from post-punk to EDM. In this way every one of their album’s is different. They aren’t afraid to experiment. While their themes and sound might shift from album to album, they’ve always spoken to an undercurrent of anxiety present in young people who are trying to make sense of the world around them. Matty Healy has earned the respect and the ears of millions of those anxious young people by meeting them where they are and genuinely speaking to the jaded nature of the lives we live on the internet. He’s earned this: greasy hair and all.
Yet you can only be jaded for so long. It’s exhausting. In a way, it’s become cliche to sing about how much the internet has ruined being young. My generation is yearning for something true, something earnest. We’ve been self-aware to the point where we need a splash of cliche in the face. The 1975 has made a point of avoiding cliches their whole career — but with “Being Funny in a Foreign Language,” they fully embrace the cliche. The album, released on Oct. 14, 2022, marks a stark shift in their songwriting away from cynical to sincere.
The album starts with an apology to 17-year-olds. On the first track, “The 1975,” Healy acknowledges the hell of living as a teenager in this age, the burdens of having opinions about everything: about self-comparison and social media. It’s a reminder that the listener is bringing all of this with them into the album. The rest of the record acts as a safe haven from all of that chaos. Listeners immediately take shelter in the second track, “Happiness,” an unabashed, peppy pop song that’s bursting with love. The lyrics are simple and pure, with Healy singing about wanting to go blind just to see his lover or how she showed him what love is. It’s utter cliche pop bliss that perfectly sets the tone for the rest of the album.
Songs like “Oh Caroline” and “I’m in Love with You,” the fifth and sixth tracks of the album, are an almost complete rejection of the brand the band has built since their first album in 2013. There’s no grander social message; there’s no cynical edge to the lyric; they’re just songs about being in love. The rush of falling for someone is all Healy wants you to feel in these songs and the band executes that feeling to a T. There are no tricks here. Healy made me fall in love to a song about heroin addiction — now he just wants me to fall in love.
Sincerity is the keyword for this album. “Wintering,” the 8th track, is a folk-pop song that tells of going home for Christmas. Healy finds joy in the idiosyncrasies of his different relatives. The story is his, but the lyrics are universal. He speaks to the idea that the holidays have become mine fields for us as we navigate our current political landscape. Yet the song reminds us that the holidays at their best should be a time to come together. It’s a relentlessly cliche idea, but somehow Healy makes it feel profound.
“Wintering” isn’t the only song off the album that focuses on small details to tell a story. “Part of the Band” and “When We Are Together,” the fourth and 11th tracks off the album, achieve this as well. Healy grasps at fleeting moments and finds the beauty in them. Listeners get a brief window into a scene, a relationship. It’s a subtle nudge to remember our own stories and to hold on to them as firmly as Healy does. Finding universal emotions is rare when telling a specific story, but The 1975 make these songs feel like our own. When Matty sings about his first kiss being in a Walmart toy department, it’s his story, but it’s one we know and connect to our own experiences. My first kiss wasn’t in a Walmart toy department, but that lyric elicits the feeling of my first kiss.
In an age where everything has grand meaning and nothing matters, it’s refreshing to listen to an album that is earnestly searching for the simple things. Cliches are often referred to in a negative context, but at a certain point, even that itself becomes overdone. Sometimes we need a love song like “All I Need To Hear,” a slow piano ballad in which Healy declares that all he needs to hear is “I love you.” Healy is speaking to a longing to be seen that is present in all of us. In a world where we can see and hear everything, maybe that’s all we need to hear.
In hindsight, is it possible that this generation was bound to latch onto a dirtbag rockstar like Matty Healy? He’s edgy and jaded and likes to stir up trouble with the older generation. Few artists have managed to speak to the mess caused by the digital age that we kids found ourselves in like he has. The 1975, time and time again, have proven they get it. Now they’ve turned around and delivered something new, an acknowledgment that they never had the answers to begin with and that all along we needed cliches to cure the gaping hole in our souls.
