Here’s a word of advice, dear reader: if you happen to stumble across a time machine tomorrow, don’t bother going back too far.
As tempting as it may be, don’t head back a few million years and attempt to arrange a face-to-face meeting with a Velociraptor: after all, we all know how that’s going to end. Don’t bother attempting to rile the Romans or greek the Greeks, either. And, sure, it may be a battle to tear yourself away from the Tudors, ease past the Elizabethans and volt over the Victorians; but, please believe us when you say that by doing so, you would be completely and utterly wasting your time.
Nope, what you’ll really want to do is go back to six years ago and tell anyone who’ll listen that The 1975 are going to be the biggest band in the world.
We’ll level with you here: the odds are pretty strong that a lot of people will laugh at you. The wider music press may label you/the band/anyone who listens to them as being ‘genuinely laughable‘, and might even wonder out loud why the hell you’re preaching the gospel of this quartet of ‘pompous arena synth-pop‘ enthusiasts with quite so much vigor.
You’ll be able to cope with that, though. After all, you’ll know something that they don’t – that, despite the doubts of the detractors, you’ll be categorically and conclusively right. Actually, scrap that – you’ll only be partially right.
After all, what you’ll have failed to mention is that by the time 2019 rolls around, Matty Healy and co. will not only be legitimately the biggest band in the world, but also the best.
We went along to two shows on their sold-out UK arena tour, and the one thing that we took away from the experience is that The 1975 are a band who are at their absolute peak right now. Forget the theatrics, the rock star personas, and even the songs themselves – this is a band who have found their niche, ramped it up to eleven, and managed to form a genuine emotional connection with their fans along the way.
Make no mistake about it, dearest reader – this band mean something to people. Like, really means something, and to a lot of people. The highlights of the set aren’t the super-massive singles. Instead, they’re the fan favourites; Robbers, Loving Someone, I Like America & America Likes Me. Sure, they might not mean much to the average Joe and Jane, but to the thousands of screaming fans who’ve crammed into the UK’s biggest venues night after night, they mean everything.
Sure, their stage show might be the most eye-popping we’ve seen for a long, long time.
They might sound insanely, wonderfully, and beautifully tight as a live unit, too. Oh, and yes, they may have the likes of The Sound, Chocolate and It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You) in their arsenal to blow the socks off even the most casual of Radio 1-loving listeners; but, in our eyes, that’s not what was truly remarkable about the shows we witnessed on The 1975‘s arena tour.
No, for us, what was truly remarkable about the two shows we saw was that they were the visual, audio and sociological embodiment of what happens when you take a band who are at the absolute pinnacle of their profession, pop ’em in front of a luminous, obnoxious, and occasionally self-deprecating stage show that has to be seen to be believed, and throw in a few thousand adoring fans who are ready and willing to scream every single word back into the faces of the four young men standing up on that stage.
Matty Healy, George Daniel, Adam Hann and Ross MacDonald haven’t merely written a bunch of great songs, and they haven’t just stood idly by and watch the streams/views/millions stack up. Instead, they’ve embraced what it means to be a band in twenty-first-century Britain, warts and all. They’ve openly discussed heroin addiction, and wondered aloud why the hell gun laws aren’t stricter in what’s supposed to be a civilised country. They parade in front of rainbow screens and embrace their own egos to the point of Spinal Tap-esque parody. Oh, and they’re not afraid to laugh at themselves, either. That’s important.
And there, in a nutshell, lies the heartbeat of our argument.
It’s a rare feat for a band to be cracking out their best work whilst also being at the absolute peak of their live game. It’s rarer still for a band to speak to so many people about so many things – gun crime, mental health, love, loss, heartbreak, and more – without coming across as impersonal (or, worse, calculating). They’re flawed, and honest, and raw, and natural; they’re human, and they’re not afraid to admit it.
That, dear reader, is what makes The 1975 a once-in-a-generation band; a band that means more, to more people, than any other group of the modern age. If that doesn’t make them the best band in the world, then we’re not quite sure what would.