A very good year: The 1975’s Matty Healy on taking it to the next level
The hot British band – an ‘effeminate, goth, ’80s, R&B, rock ’n’ roll, modern art thing’ – have just released their second album, whose mix of raw emotions and clinical delivery has been polarising opinions
The video is remarkable, a true window into its subject’s soul.
Posted last year on celebrity gossip website TMZ, the two-minute clip shows Matthew Healy (known as Matty), frontman of the popular British band The 1975, on the pavement outside a restaurant in West Hollywood, where Healy has emerged to find several young women excitedly offering him an old-fashioned bong. The singer accepts, noting how much he loves California, then fills his lungs before exhaling smoke over the heads of a gathering scrum of fans and photographers.
“You want me to hit you up?” he asks one girl, happily refilling the bowl as her friend records the puff-puff-pass on a smartphone. “Let’s do it.”
Generosity, exhibitionism, the heedless pursuit of pleasure – it’s all there in The 1975’s music, a canny blend of sounds and attitudes that has turned Healy, 26, into a pop idol for the social media age. His band’s 2013 debut reached No 1 in the UK with sly but swooning hits such as Chocolate and Sex, and for a while the internet was convinced he was dating Taylor Swift. Now the group have just released their second album, which could vault The 1975 to the next level.
“If we’ve ever had the chance to be a big band, it’s with this record,” Healy says.
Yet rather than streamline their approach for maximum efficiency, Healy and his bandmates – guitarist Adam Hann, bassist Ross MacDonald and drummer George Daniel – have only added wrinkles for the new album, which advertises its complexity with its extravagant title: I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It.
