| Band Members | ||
| Matthew Healy | – | vocals, guitar |
| Adam Hann | – | guitar |
| George Daniel | – | drums |
| Ross MacDonald | – | bass guitar |
They have released four EPs: Facedown, Sex, Music for Cars and IV. Their self-titled debut album was released on 2 September 2013 through Dirty Hit/Polydor. The album debuted at No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart on 8 September 2013, ahead of Nine Inch Nails’ comeback album.
Formation and Band Name
Matthew Healy (son of Denise Welch and Tim Healy), Ross MacDonald, Adam Hann and George Daniel met at Wilmslow High School near Manchester as teenagers and began to play music in 2002. “There was this idealistic hippy council worker who started to put on these gigs for kids, to form bands. I remember the guitarist Adam Hann came up to me and said he wanted to play one of these shows. We started playing, doing covers of punk songs and pop songs and just started out doing that. Then once we eventually wrote a song, I decided, well, this is a lot better than going to work – or going to school, for that matter. We started from then and we’ve been making music together since we were about 15 – George was 14, actually, when we started,” said Healy in an interview with Gigwise. After Hann invited the members to form a band, they passed their early days covering punk songs in a local club. Healy was originally the drummer, but took over vocals after the previous singer left to start another band. Daniel was recruited as the new drummer to complete the final line-up.
Having previously performed and released material under various guises including Talkhouse, The Slowdown, Bigsleep, and Drive Like I Do, the band eventually settled on the name The 1975. Healy recounts that the name was inspired by scribblings found in the back page of an old Beat poetry book dated “1 June, The 1975”.
The band first appeared as The 1975 in January 2012, in the run up to the release of their first EP and after signing to UK based Indie label Dirty Hit. They performed as The 1975 for the first time in February as a support act for General Fiasco on their nationwide tour.
EP releases (2012–2013)
The release of the band’s first EP, entitled Facedown, in August 2012 saw the band’s first UK airplay on national radio with lead track “The City”, which featured as part of a BBC Introducing show with Huw Stephens on BBC Radio 1.
The 1975 once again garnered national radio attention in late 2012, with BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe championing their single “Sex” from the Sex EP, which was released on 19 November 2012. They embarked on a tour of the UK and Ireland which extended in to early 2013, before beginning a US tour in the spring.
Upon the release of Music for Cars EP on 4 March 2013, The 1975 found mainstream chart success with single “Chocolate”, which reached number 19 in the UK singles chart. On 20 May 2013 the band released IV EP, which included a new version of the song “The City”. The track charted in UK and received airplay in several other countries.
The 1975 toured extensively to support the releases and to build hype before releasing the debut album. The band supported Muse on the second leg of The 2nd Law World Tour at the Emirates Stadium in London on 26 May 2013. They also toured with The Neighbourhood in the US in June 2013, and supported The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park on 13 July 2013. In August 2013, the band performed on the Festival Republic Stage at 2013 Reading and Leeds Festivals.
In a feature article about the band, Elliot Mitchell of When the Gramophone Rings wrote that releasing a string EPs before the debut album was “a move that he deemed necessary to provide context to the band’s broad sound, rather than just building up with singles alone.” Matthew Healy said, “We wouldn’t have been able to release the album without putting out the EP’s first, as we wanted to make sure we could express ourselves properly before dropping this long, ambitious debut record on people.”
The 1975 (2013–present)
The 1975, the band’s eponymous debut album, was released on 2 September 2013. It was co-produced by Mike Crossey, who has previously worked with Arctic Monkeys and Foals. The lead single promoting the album is a re-worked version of “Sex”, which was released on 26 August 2013. The song premiered on Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show on 8 July 2013, and a music video was released onto YouTube on 26 July 2013. The 1975 debuted at no. 1 on the UK Albums Chart.
The 1975 will tour in UK in September 2013, among others performing in Kingston upon Hull as headliners at Freedom Festival, a celebration of the city’s shortlisting for 2017 UK City of Culture designation, and at iTunes Festival on 8 September 2013 as an opening act for indie electronic quartet Bastille. A North American tour is planned for October 2013, European for November 2013, and in January 2014 the band will perform in New Zealand and Australia.
Musical style
Critics at Pitchfork Magazine have favourably compared them to The Big Pink. Sex EP was described by Paste as “equal parts ethereal and synth pop”, with “haunting” and “smooth” vocals. Their “mellow”, stripped down style was praised for its lack of “attention-grabbing production theatrics”. Though generally acknowledged as an alternative rock group, they have been influenced by diverse genres including electro-pop, electronic music, guitar pop, and R&B. Healy specifically cites Talking Heads, Prince, My Bloody Valentine, Michael Jackson, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, D’angelo and Sigur Rós as musical influences; he states that his greatest influence is the oeuvre of filmmaker John Hughes. Their “melancholic” black and white visual aesthetic is juxtaposed with major keys and what the band calls “classic pop sensibilities”. Lyrically, The 1975 explore themes of discovery and novelty in the more specific context of sex, love, drugs, hope, death, and fear, thus the basis of rock music.