This week we look at the sound of the post-modern pop band which is The 1975.
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In 2013 I discovered the song Chocolate by The 1975. It was a song that I used to described back then as pure indie pop to which I included in my indie flavor playlist along with songs by Local Natives and The Neighbourhood. Chocolate is one of those catchy pop songs that’s very hard not to sing along with even if you don’t know the lyrics to it. It was an “indie” song I didn’t mind sharing with the masses.
Chocolate is found on their eponymous debut album released in 2013. The whole album is filled with ethereal synth pop and melodic guitar riffs that give out a retro vibe. I remember obsessing to songs like You, Me, and Menswear a few years back. I thought these songs were really unique and expected the band will go far and would be really popular with mainstream audiences.
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Skip to late 2015, when I completely forgot about the band. I was waiting sitting on a bench parked outside the station of Y101 when Chad the Stud of the Midday Vibe played a groovy little song. It sounded so retro, it sounded so modern. It reminded me a lot of David Bowie’s Fame or any Talking Heads song. The song I heard that day was The 1975’s Love Me.
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Apparently the band came back. They released their sophomore album in February 2016 called I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it. The band consists of drummer George Daniel, bassist Ross MacDonald, guitarist Adam Hann, and lead vocalist and songwriter Matthew Healy who named the band The 1975 after he found the term scribbled on an old book, in which someone dated their notes as “1st June. The 1975”.
The band is famous for its genre-bending sound. Critics have been quick to qualify The 1975 as a pop band despite their cross-genre influences, but the band has resisted categorization for the most part. Healy has said “The critics were very confused about us... like, “This band doesn’t know what they want to be”. We do, we just want to be different things, because that’s a generational way of creating music”.
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Scott Kerr of AllMusic wrote that the band combined "the dark and youthful themes of sex, love, and fear with ethereal alt-rock music”, which is exactly what this generation need.The 1975 is an odd band that you can’t really categorize. Their melancholic 80’s inspired new wave sound is juxtaposed with classic pop sensibilities, which could be a new genre of pop that I wanna call “post-modern pop”, pop music that doesn’t want to be pop.
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