Being Funny in a Foreign Language: The 1975 are Back
Sounds | Mike Furlong
“Am I just some average, post-coke skinny bloke calling his ego imagination?”,
The 1975 frontman Matty Healy asks himself on the lead single from the band’s new album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language. This question in some ways defines the central task of the band in their newest era: can they find an identity beyond the socio-political, ambitious themes that have defined much of their recent music? Are they finally willing to accept that yes, they are average people who feel average things, despite being talented and famous? Surprisingly, they are.
The 1975’s career as a band has been one of slowly moving towards sincerity and away from headiness. They made their name during the Tumblr era of the Internet (thousands of angsty teens spent 2013 blasting their single “Chocolate” in their rooms while staring at black and white photos of people smoking, their Doc Martens dirtying their beds). This was obviously an era that rewarded music as far away from reality as possible: kids wanted content that romanticised everything bad in the world and spat on anything good. Since then, though, The 1975 have grown up (and the kids with them). Each album they’ve released since their self titled debut in 2013 has gotten a little bit tighter musically, and a lot more multifaceted and interesting lyrically. 2018’s A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships saw Matty Healy writing seriously and thoughtfully about gun violence, the emptiness of drug addiction, the toxicity of the Internet, and politics; those Tumblr fans would have puked hearing the songs. The album made sincerity its focus; its thesis could be that hiding what you really feel behind irony and layers of postmodern thought is what leads to many of the world’s problems never being solved.
Cut to 2020: the band has released an incredibly weird, incredibly long album called Notes on a Conditional Form: 22 songs, 80 minutes, and about every genre you could imagine. Ranging from UK garage, early 2000s pop punk, country, 80s new wave, and spoken word, the group seemed to want to destroy the idea of themselves as not just being a pop band, but a band at all. The lyrics are just as sprawling in theme; global warming, mental health, and death are all dealt with not even halfway into the album. So what do they do after the most conceptual album of their career? Make straight-up pop music.
This year’s Being Funny in a Foreign Language is their shortest album to date, with 11 tracks. Lyrically, the band is reaching the apex of their clever-to-sincere arc with this batch of songs: topics include falling in love, missing someone, making mistakes, and trying to put things back together again. Healy leaves the too-smart-and-mysterious-for-feelings stuff at the door and sings, “Oh in case you didn’t notice/ I would go blind just to see you/ I’d go too far just to have you near” on “Happiness”. The scope of most of these songs is noticeably smaller than what we’ve come to expect from the band in terms of theme; although there is a somewhat clumsy investigation of mass shootings on “Looking For Somebody (To Love)”, Healy doesn’t seem as interested in wrestling with the problems of the world on this album as he has before. This body of songs is more about connection and the magic held in the small, simple things in life, rather than the state of the world it's being released upon.
Take track 6, “I’m In Love With You”, a song about being nervous to tell somebody what you really feel. “Oh there’s something I’ve/ Been meaning to/ Say to you baby but I just can’t do it”, Healy sings in one of the best vocal performances he’s ever recorded. After vulnerable, meandering, and nervous verses, when the chorus hits, it hits. And the lyrics are literally just “I’m in love with you/ I - I - I - I” again and again. This chorus might epitomise the emotional centre of this album: having the courage to throw away the need to be clever and calling emotions what they are. And it feels so good.
Musically, this album ties in with the theme of simplicity and humanity. Most of the songs were recorded in one room with the band playing everything live, using as many real instruments as possible. Jack Antonoff, the producer whom Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Clairo, Lorde, and just about any major pop star call up when they need hits, takes the role of third producer alongside Healy and George Daniel, drummer of the band. Many fans of the band (including me) had raised eyebrows when they heard he would be working on this album; he has a tendency to create slightly tame sounding music, and is a little too invested in Bruce Springsteen for his own good. But he seems to have stretched out on this album working with Healy and Daniel, not relying on the tropes of his production style as much as letting the band lead the way. Everything here sounds fantastic, with the woody sounds of live drums, acoustic guitars, pianos, and cellos blending beautifully with touches of sparkling synths and doubled vocal takes à la John Lennon. For an album released in an era where Yeat and Lil Yachty are dominating the charts with copious amounts of 808s and digital ear candy, the sonic signature of this album is bravely acoustic and distinctly live-sounding. And not at all in the way that Tame Impala’s music sounds live; this album has the DNA of The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and Paul Simon written all over it, cultural references that are not in vogue right now. Although on the surface this album might seem safer than the band’s previous works, digging deeper it might be one of the biggest risks they’ve ever taken.
So it seems like The 1975 have grown up: less cleverness, more love. Hopefully, this newfound maturity means Healy won’t be tweeting anything cancellable any time soon (no guarantees there though).