The 1975’s Matty Healy: “We can do heavy all day long – but we’re not because it wasn’t new”

nme.com:

The 1975‘s Matty Healy has revealed why the band aren’t interested in having their sound lean towards a heavier direction.The ‘Robbers’ singer appeared as a guest in a wide-ranging conversation with Joshua Citarella for the Doom Scroll podcast and took a moment to reflect on why The 1975 were hated by some listeners when they first appeared on the scene.In the discussion, Healy explained that it was due to them being a “band”, and added that “every band that got signed over us was a band that was essentially doing an impression of the Arctic Monkeys”.“So what they were saying is, a band has to be from an economically deprived place in order to have authenticity.

It needs to be kind of gritty. It needs to reference, at the time, the kind of the aesthetics of post punk,” he added. “So like, you know, all of your Joy Division, industrialisation, Thatcherism, brutalism, all those kinds of things.

And we just didn’t adhere to any of that…”Healy shared that he and his bandmates – comprised of Adam Hann, Ros MacDonald and George Daniel – were “hated for essentially being a band that was the opposite of heavy.”He continued: “And I was like, well, after [1998’s] ‘The Shape of Punk to Come’ came out – [it was] the last punk album – it knew that.

Refused – they split up because they were politically so different… And in their last show, the cops came. It makes me want to cry; I get chills thinking about it.“The cops came in, and all of their fans turned around and shouted the line from ‘Rather Be Dead’: ‘I’d rather be alive.’ And they’re just shouting, ‘I’d rather be alive.