Artist
The 1975
Why we feature this artist A band that made pop’s contradictions part of the arrangement The 1975 can make a highly polished song sound as though the person singing it is still arguing with its premise. Matty Healy's words and delivery often introduce embarras…
- From
- United Kingdom
- Sound
- Pop rock, alternative pop
- Active
- 2002–present
Start with the music
Tracks to explore
The artist, in context
The story of The 1975
Why we feature this artist
A band that made pop’s contradictions part of the arrangement
The 1975 can make a highly polished song sound as though the person singing it is still arguing with its premise. Matty Healy's words and delivery often introduce embarrassment, desire or unease into bright guitar and electronic settings. The band's albums expand that tension through production, letting a direct pop hook coexist with restless changes of mood and form.
The first two albums
Healy, George Daniel, Adam Hann and Ross MacDonald developed together through several early band names before releasing The 1975 in 2013. Chocolate, Sex and Girls gave the debut different kinds of rhythmic and melodic energy. The group could be described as a guitar band, but the production already gave electronics, atmosphere and small repeating figures a substantial role.
I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It followed in 2016. Love Me and The Sound made the pop ambition especially clear, while quieter and more atmospheric passages gave the album another pace. Daniel and Healy's production work helped make those changes feel like parts of a shared world rather than unrelated exercises in style.
The later album worlds
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships arrived in 2018, with Love It If We Made It and It's Not Living (If It's Not with You) among its central songs. The album's concerns were wider than the title's apparent subject, moving between public anxiety and private dependence. The attractive surface could make a difficult lyric more unsettling rather than reassuring.
Notes on a Conditional Form in 2020 stretched the format further, while Being Funny in a Foreign Language in 2022 gave the band a more concentrated setting. The catalogue's changes are best heard as questions about what belongs inside a pop album: a dance track, an exposed confession, an instrumental pause or a chorus so immediate that its complications only arrive after the listener has begun to sing along.
Essential releases
The 1975
Chocolate, Sex and Girls establish a band already interested in production beyond a straightforward guitar sound.
I Like It When You Sleep…
The Sound and Love Me share space with quieter, more atmospheric passages.
A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships
Direct pop hooks carry a wider mixture of personal dependence and public unease.