The 1975 played in Stockholm on Friday night. The photo is from an earlier time.
Photo: PER-OTTO OPPI / STELLA PICTURES/GONZALES PHOTO
As a teenage pop nerd, I’d been crazy about The 1975.
There are many reasons.
The quartet from the outskirts of Manchester write smart pop songs with DNA remnants from artists from the 80s such as Alison Moyet, Boy Meets Girl and Johnny Hates Jazz. And regardless of where the music then lands (afropop, country, electronic excursions), the group can never mask the songs’ inherent sense of melody.
The 1975 also has lyrics that point to the anxiety an entire generation feels about everything from environmental destruction to the use of social media.
They want something with their pop, they want it to mean something.
And they have frontman Matty Healy, a lovable chain smoker who briefly dated Taylor Swift and who, since the band’s inception, has served as a grateful quote-syringe to Britain’s increasingly shrinking music press.
They are also not only gigantic at home in the UK but also huge in the US. Something that hardly ever happens to British guitar bands these days.
Tele 2 is enclosed with black curtains to a large square and crowded club room. The scene, the interior of a villa, looks like we are about to be part of the filming of a sitcom. At the start, the band will quietly enter one by one through the front door and turn on floor lamps to the background sound of the night’s crickets. In the living room, there are a bunch of old televisions stacked on top of each other. Healy sits down at a piano with a cigarette in hand and starts “The 1975” by hacking away at the keys.
What follows is two hours of pop entertainment that I haven’t quite experienced before.
It’s not about confetti or expensive effects, but how they use the stage space. A kind of mix between theater and pop concert where cameras follow the band and above all Healy around the house and everything is projected on two big screens. During one song, three quarters of The 1975 sit around the living room table and play. For a while, Healy leans out of a cheat window and sings to a camera we don’t see backstage. In the middle of another song, a regular furniture move is going on up there.
On the televisions, the news flickers by: Ukraine, record heat, the situation in Israel, a new king in Great Britain. In front of the screens, Healy sits slumped in an armchair. Somewhere in there, the group could have taken the risk of doing a U2 and bombastically commenting on the state of the world. Instead, Healy takes a sip from the wine glass and sighs. A little later, he stares silently at a feature with Andrew Tate. No, The 1975 is not out to save the world at any cost. Healy later says that during the tour he realized that he does not understand the younger Generation Z, all because of different frames of reference. During “Be my mistake”, Healy himself is left with an acoustic guitar and the sound of the TV on in the background. It’s one of the loneliest things I’ve experienced on a big stage.
At times, Healy plays his theatrical role a little too bored for the show’s good. Only after eighty minutes do I see a genuinely smiling frontman when he notices how the Swedish fans get going in “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”. The fans make him and the band pick up “Girls” on International Women’s Day, “our most misogynistic song”, sighs Healy but mostly pretending.
And when the kids in Tele 2 go completely wild in a drunken “The sound”, I stand like a middle-aged pop singer and nod at what I hear and see.
The prime time for The 1975 is, as promised, still now.
The 1975 – Tele 2 Black Box, Stockholm
Public: 8,000 (sold out).
He comes: British pop band formed in 2002. All five of the group’s full-lengths have topped the UK album chart. Consists of Matty Healy (vocals, guitar), Ross MacDonald (bass), Adam Hann (guitar) and George Daniel (drums).
Was: The quartet (live expanded to more than double the number of members) is out on the “Still at their very best” tour, which stopped at Lollapalooza in Stockholm this summer.
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The track list
The 1975
Looking for Somebody (to Love)
Happiness
Part of the Band
Oh Caroline
I’m in Love With You
A Change of Heart
Robbers
Chocolate
So Far (It’s Alright)
Fallingforyou
About You
When We Are Together
Be My Mistake
Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America
If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)
PRODUCT PRODUCT PRODUCT PRODUCT
It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)
The Sound
Somebody Else
Girls
Love It If We Made It
Sex
Give yourself a try
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