Pulp Ranked: The 1975's Songs Called "The 1975"

By Genevieve Couvret

The first track on each album by The 1975 is titled ‘The 1975’. Except for the 2019 single of the same name, each track features the same lyrics but is sonically different, prefacing the tone of the tracks to come. 

4. The 1975 (2013) 

This is the first incarnation of the song and the first time these lyrics appear. They paint a vignette of the band’s aesthetic. They’re sensory, romantic, trying to capture late-night flashes of lights and flesh and mistakes. The production is ambient and dreamy. Matty Healy’s (the lead singer) voice layers on top of itself. It’s slow. It builds. It’s a pretty good first impression. But like most first impressions, is not the best that the band can give.

3. A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (2018)

This version of the song starts with Matty Healy seemingly improvising on the piano, singing to himself. It’s playful and familiar. Then, the words come in. The texture is much denser, the layers of voices are sounding more synthetic or artificial. They have a stronger emphasis because between each line or two are a couple of notes or chords on the piano. These gaps of almost-silence create a contrast that makes the words feel heavier and far less natural or improvised than the flirtations with the piano that we get at the start. But what the light piano and the thick vocals show is either side of the musical spectrum The 1975 occupies.

2. I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it (2016)

The second version of the song is the best version. The song eases in, sounding like it’s warming up, as is apt for the first taster track of the album. 

There are more voices than just Matty Healy’s in this version, and they layer on top of each in harmony in an almost choral way. The melody is legato this time, but underpinning the flow of the words is still a  strong, deep ambient sound beneath it. The song gradually builds at the end and then fades to silence, leaving you wanting more, as you wait for the rest of the album to play.

1. Notes On A Conditional Form (2019) 

Although this track is underscored by some ambient chords, it represents a complete shift from the other tracks titled ‘The 1975’, and from all of their other songs more broadly. Mainly because it’s not really a song.

This single is a collaboration with climate activist Greta Thunberg. It’s essentially a 5-minute speech about the climate crisis, urging us to take action.

The very fact that it is a self-titled track is a choice that seeks to reframe their music, their brand, their platform into a political and activist mechanism. It reflects the breakdown of the delineation between politics and pop culture, the power of the two to influence each other and the band’s decision to reach out to their young audience and leverage that for good.