“Genre is dead now,” Matty Healy said in 2019, talking to the studio audience of a radio station in Austin, Texas. “That’s the whole thing, right? We were surely one of the first bands of recent times to really peddle that idea…[and] it’s cool. I like how weird The 1975 is.”
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Weird, indeed. Like chameleons, Healy and his group of childhood mates have spent the past decade shedding layer after layer of sonic skin. They’ve been a pop group powered by synths, as well as a rock band strapped with Stratocasters. They’ve documented the modern moment with songs about FaceTime phone sex and school shootings, but they’ve also scratched the world’s itch for 1980s-inspired pop anthems, creating the sort of music that might’ve blasted from the stereo of Molly Ringwald’s car in a long-lost John Hughes movie.
For The 1975, music isn’t about categorization. It’s about range and exploration. And while it took the rest of the world an entire decade—from the release of The 1975’s self-titled debut in 2013 to the arrival of Being Funny in a Foreign Language in 2022—to properly recognize the band as genre-annihilating headliners, The 1975 spelled it out for us at the very beginning.
Between 2012 and 2013, The 1975 released four introductory EPs. The group had already been together for a decade, transforming themselves from emo-loving 13-year-olds into a band of 20-something innovators. Record labels didn’t love the idea of signing a band whose sound was too eclectic to pigeonhole, so The 1975 remained independent until their own manager, Jamie Oborne, formed a label for them. With a full-length debut planned for 2013, the guys hatched a plan to build momentum with four EPs that captured the full spread of The 1975’s sound.
First up: Facedown
Co-produced by Mike Crossey, who previously launched the Arctic Monkeys’ career by recording their first two singles, Facedown introduced the world to “The City,” The 1975’s first Top 40 hit. Rooted in gated percussion and buzzing keyboards, “The City” sounded like anthemic British indie-rock filtered through the neon disco ball of M83’s dance-pop.
The rest of the EP was similarly diverse. The dark, stoic “Antichrist” channeled Interpol. “Woman” mixed moody soundscapes with emo melodies. Facedown cast a wide net and built a wide audience—one that notably included Taylor Swift. Nearly a dozen years later, when Swift crashed The 1975’s headlining performance in London, she performed a solo rendition of “The City” alone, strumming her acoustic guitar, rattling off Healy’s words by memory.
Next They Had Sex
Arriving during the final stretch of 2012 was Sex, a second EP that followed Facedown‘s lead by pairing a radio-ready single with more melancholic, abstract material. In this case, the single was the EP’s title track—an insistent, cathartic anthem about hook-up culture, set to a sweeping soundtrack that evoked The Killers and Bloc Party.
Sex‘s opener, “Intro/Set3,” was a soundscape of glitch percussion and looped vocals. “Undo” was a sketch of highly-produced abstract pop music, bordering on chillwave. “You,” with its repeating guitar pattern and four-on-the-floor stomp, seemed to channel Kings of Leon from the mid-2000s (after the group had toured with U2 but before they’d diluted The Edge’s influence into adult-contemporary anthems like “Use Somebody”). Sex found The 1975 continuing to wear their influences on their sleeves, but the EP was far too diverse to be called derivative—”Sex” became the band’s second UK hit.
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Important to Have, too: Music for Cars
In early 2013, The 1975 rang in the new year with a third EP, Music for Cars. Produced in Healy’s bedroom, it was mostly an ambient project, with atmospheric tracks that ebbed and flowed into one another. “HNSCC” and “Anobrain” were barely even songs; instead, they sounded like watercolor splashes of musical paint, slowly moving outward, eventually blending together to create some kind of overall hue.
The outlier was “Chocolate,” which followed the tradition of “The City” and “Sex” as the EP’s commercially-minded single. “Chocolate” became the band’s international breakthrough, going double-platinum in America (where it reached the Top 40) and peaking at No. 19 in the UK. Years after its release, though, perhaps the most striking moment on Music for Cars is “Me,” a hauntingly depressive ballad whose saxophone solo and synth-pop textures laid the brickwork for the ’80s-leaning music the band still had in store.
IV FTW
The 1975’s final EP was IV, which included a reworked version of “The City.” IV‘s biggest draw, though, was its two final tracks: “So Far (It’s Alright),” a pop-flavored blast of sunny R&B with Prince-worthy guitar breaks; and “Fallingforyou,” whose gauzy keyboards, achingly vulnerable lyrics, and electronic architecture made it the perfect companion piece to “Me.”
IV arrived in May 2013 and was followed later that summer by The 1975’s full-length debut album, which featured a streamlined version of the band’s sound. “The City,” “Sex,” and “Chocolate” were all included on the album, serving as anchor tracks on a record that swung for the fences. For audiences looking for genuine hits, The 1975 had plenty of contenders. For those looking for a full introduction to the band, though, the preceding EPs were required listening.
A decade later, those EPs look a lot like a musical road map that charted the course of The 1975’s first five albums. I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It, the band’s sophomore release from 2016, explored the R&B, dance, and ’80s textures that were introduced by songs like “So Far (It’s Alright).” A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships and Notes on a Conditional Form indulged the band’s experimental tendencies, mixing ambiance and open-ended song structures with a handful of tight, taut singles. Being Funny in a Foreign Language found the band knotting its loose ends and focusing on retro-leaning pop anthems, effectively bringing the band full circle after a decade of expansion.
Photo by Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images for CBS Radio
