Here at One on One HQ, we really do love it when they make it.
Seriously, think about it. If you’d spent an inordinate amount of time championing new music from every corner of the globe, wouldn’t you afford yourself the luxury of cracking a smile when one of those artists finally hits the big leagues? After all, you’ve watched them grow from barely being able to hold the attention of a tiny room to strutting around the Main Stage at Reading Festival like they own the place; it’s only natural that you’ll feel – dare we say it? – proud of them.
When we first stumbled across The 1975 way back in 2013, we had an inkling that they were going to be absolutely super-massive one day.
What we weren’t expecting, though, is that they’d achieve this by pumping out three albums that veered between Eighties synth-pop, stadium punk-rock, and slightly odd spoken word pieces with the same pace and dexterity as your average Olympic sprinter.
We won’t lie to you: this can, initially, be slightly jarring. After all, you can’t pretend that you weren’t somewhat taken aback when you heard the final notes of the Strokes-esque Give Yourself A Try fade into the opening of the ‘Tropical House’-inspired TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME on their last album, 2018’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships.
Still, if you think that The 1975’s refusal to settle on one genre is jarring on record, then you should try going to one of their gigs.
No, that’s not so you can loudly demand that they ‘stop trying to be INXS and play Chocolate’. It’s so you can see for yourself that this musical hyperactivity, refusal to stick to one genre, and neu-retro approach to showmanship… Well, it works.
You’re a punk fan? Well, then, you’ve got People. So you’re more into pop? Excellent: you’ll love It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You) and Chocolate. Or, if you’re a fan of – in no particular order – Eighties soft-pop, Noughties indie-rock, or stadium-sized arena pomp, then you’ve got Somebody Else, Me & You Together Song, and I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes) to keep you entertained until you’re next able to stagger your way towards the nearest bar.
And, at the heart of it all, you’ve got Matty Healy.
Some say that he’s the talismanic frontman whose undeniable talent and raw charisma is the beating heart of The 1975’s success. Others say that he’s a jumped-up gobshite who needs to stop talking and get on with writing more songs that sound like Somebody Else.
But, whatever your opinion might be, you can’t deny that the guy’s got style. Not only does he manage to carry an entire 90-minute arena show on his skinny shoulders without missing a beat, but he does so while wearing an oversized jumper that appears to have come straight from the Yer Nan rail at his local charity shop.
That, dear reader, is what we call a true rock star.
So, what do you get if you take the aforementioned stadium-sized Rock Star™, arm him with a back catalogue that’s packed full of more bangers than a butcher’s window, and then plonk him on a stage in front of a few thousand people?
Well, that’s easy: you get a show. And we don’t mean a show in the ‘four blokes standing on a stage for an hour and a bit’ sense. We mean a show in the sense of a stadium-sized band ploughing through the kind of multi-faceted back catalogue that most of their contemporaries would kill for, all fronted by the kind of natural frontman that only comes along once or twice in a generation.
Rock and roll, as they say, is dead. God bless The 1975.