the 1975

Only two listens so far so have the right to change my mind by years end

i do wish matty had written a bit less about being "cancelled" on this album though & he's admitted as much in interviews

i think part of his appeal is that he's good at toeing the line with the dirtbag thing. his persona is as much that as it has in common with say, ezra from vampire weekend (who i don't think really fits into it at all despite what's known about his personal life), just without ezra's upper class pose

https://www.drjimtaylor.com/4.0/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/costanza-arm.jpg
How seinfeld’s George costanza became the bad boy you love to roll your eyes at

there’s something very particular the “about you” reminds me of — the blue nile, for sure, but the the melody of the hook is so warmly familiar for some reason and I just can’t place it, it’s driving me nuts

"with or without you"? probably not the one you're thinking of though

in the seinfeld analogy matty is george/larry (widely misunderstood as a misanthrope/narcissist dirtbag but is actually a nice guy, only really unusual for how open he is about his flaws) while ezra is jerry (dated a teenager)

Brad made me lol but also it OTM about “about you” being a “me” and “you” together song

Even if he was that’s such a boring & uninteresting angle on an album

― xheugy eddy (D-40)

idk I appreciated it because I'm not seeing a lot of women writing at length about this album or them at length who are also taking the album and band seriously, whether here or elsewhere (and if I'm missing anything, please point me to them!)

thought the ann powers piece was good. this is as otm a description of matty as i've read

But for all the leading man tendencies he exhibits, Healy remains a trickster. He can't give up his wicked insights, his distancing jests, his assertions of independence. Salting the music's earnestness with sarcasm and intimations of self-sabotage, Healy ultimately stays true to the archetype he's always best embodied – a hyper-intellectual sybarite who loves pleasure and connection but needs to keep his distance to maintain his creativity and cool.

Looking for Somebody trades It’s Not Living’s smack for guns huh. what a smash

― anza808, Thursday, October 13, 2022 11:06 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Only post I've seen that directly engaged with the lyrics of "Looking for Somebody (To Love)." Am I the only one who finds the inevitable live sing-along of this upbeat anthem deeply unsettling and problematic?

studio version of "I'm In Love With You" still strikes me as a missed opportunity and i'm wondering what it would sound like if it was on any of their previous albums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORCNXtnlD38

live version of problematic song

i find the line "somebody picking up the body of somebody they were getting to know" so devastatingly sad when i know what the song's about, and i think that's ultimately why i don't find it problematic? it's inhabiting a totally toxically fucked perspective but healy as this fractally self-reflexive author is able to hover just one level of context above it at times so that i don't feel like i'm stuck in the echo chamber of some violent misogynist's mind, and it's ultimately what makes the song really textually interesting beyond it being a really happy-sounding song about something horrible

obv maybe a little edgelordy to be like "i'm going to write a song from the perspective of an incel school shooter" but healy for better or worse (better i think) is that kind of writer, and it's absolutely aligned with the impulse that created "love it if we made it" (is it problematic that their crowds sing "i moved on her like a bitch"?`)

tbh I had to google the lyrics to a song I'd already considered the album's catchiest and best. I thought he sang "Second Gentleman."

In a meeting so will need to watch the live performance in a bit but "I moved on her like a bitch" is a quote in a song about how "modernity has failed us." The commentary is quite clear to me. I don't like the first-person incel narrative of "Looking for Somebody" that is probably intentionally ambiguous about where to place the blame but am admittedly triggered (please ignore the pun) by school shooting shit as the father of young kids and spouse of a teacher.

Having now read the lyrics and listened to it again, isn't he in and out of the character's mind -- being him and observing him and vice versa?

(I'll also admit that I didn't know how "gentleman" now means incel).

The specific idea that school shooters are/were just "looking for somebody to love" it implies victim blaming. Reminds me of X Gonzalez's rant after Parkland when she said something to the effect of: critics say we shouldn't have ostracized him, but "you didn't know him, we did". Thinking of crowds of teenagers singing "bang bang bang bang" does not sit right with me.

*they

i think the idea of finding a sing along to a school shooter anthem problematic and unsettling is a completely fair position. on some level the song obviously intends to be unsettling. i've been thinking about why they didn't release it as a single given that, to me, it's clearly the catchiest pop song on the album. i wonder if they were a bit chastened by "love it if we made it" ... i kinda feel like not releasing it as a single is an implicit acknowledgement that the song is problematic & there was a desire on their end to not have the press cycle for this album defined by whether it's ok to release a giddy pop anthem from the POV of a school shooter. though it also must be acknowledged that "pumped up kicks" already got there a decade ago.

for me, the song comes from a place of empathy so i don't really find it problematic beyond the surface level tension of the sonics of the song vs the subject matter. but i also think that such a bait and switch is part & parcel of pop music... the song is basically their version of "born in the USA." the idea of american crowds -- which are, on some level, now defined by mass shootings (the anxiety, the hard logistics of what to do if there is a mass shooting where you're standing [i'm always making myself very cognizant of exits at venues]) -- singing along to an anthemic pop song about a mass shooter that asks you to consider the mass shooter's interior life and by extension what we as a society can do to help such ppl, makes for a really interesting communal experience/reaction to art. most "acceptable" mass shooting art i would imagine is pretty mawish. but not everyone has to want that communal experience either -- if everyone did then the song would be far less provocative.

i ultimately find it provocative but not in a troll-y way which, certainly for this band, makes it easier to defend than a lot of other stuff, to me. Indexed, you saying that the commentary on "i love it if we made it" is clear and so that makes quoting trump's misogyny not problematic to you is also a totally fair position but i do think that, for other people, ambiguity makes the art better. again i don't really begrudge anyone's position here but i think that that one can be enthralled or revolted (or both at the same time) is what makes the song great, aside from it just being a wonderful pop song. but i also love gus van sant's "elephant"

xp "Supreme Gentleman" is what incel mass shooter Elliot Rodger called himself in his manifesto, and it has since been adopted by the online incels who venerate him.

I generally agree with Brad's take on the song's lyrics. For me, the victim blaming implied by "looking for somebody to love" is a product of the shooter's deeply disturbed and hateful mind, not a view that's endorsed by Healy. Though I definitely understand why one might hear the whole thing as an exercise in poor taste.

the song is basically their version of "born in the USA."

I thought of this too, with a difference: the guy in the Springsteen song is sympathetic or at least not a sociopath.

the song is basically their version of "born in the USA."

I thought of this too, with a difference: the guy in the Springsteen song is sympathetic or at least not a sociopath.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, October 17, 2022 1:57 PM (five minutes ago)

for sure. but that's why i say it's "their version" bcuz a character as plainly sympathetic as the one in "born in the usa" is not the 1975's MO. (and i'm not denigrating "born in the USA" which is a great song and given springsteen's stature w/in american culture was a more difficult and loaded trick to play than anything matty will ever do.)

The specific idea that school shooters are/were just "looking for somebody to love" it implies victim blaming. Reminds me of X Gonzalez's rant after Parkland when she said something to the effect of: critics say we shouldn't have ostracized him, but "you didn't know him, we did"

― Indexed, Monday, October 17, 2022 1:28 PM (nineteen minutes ago)

i think this song is aiming to provoke questions around what society can do to embrace outcasts in a macro sense -- i don't read it as saying something as literal as "high school students bear the responsibility of making sure they don't get massacred by ostracized boys."

i do think it's a worthwhile conversation & it's one that a bunch of art across the political spectrum is attempting to have. on one end there is i.e. alex lee moyer "tfw no gf" which i haven't seen but is obv very divisive in the empathy it extends to incels. matty rubs up against that sphere online, i'm sure he's seen that movie. he posted recently about following ppl like andrew tate, ben shapiro for "research" ... you can draw a direct line from a lot of his public online activity to this song.

on the other end of the spectrum there's this documentary short that was released recently called "stranger at the gate" about an army veteran who intends to bomb a mosque in ohio. when he goes to case the mosque before the bombing he gets welcomed with open arms by the members there and ends up converting to islam and becoming a pillar of the community. it's a fascinating film and at only 30 mins i couldn't recommend it strongly enough if you're interested in this general conversation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbbl1S6foM

great posts j0rd

yeah

Yes, TY for your pov - much appreciated. It's been many many years since I saw Elephant but recall it being unambiguously cold and disturbing. "Looking for Somebody to Love" is a gleeful celebration. Maybe I'm supposed to find this ironic and witty, but unfortunately I don't.

well, it is gleeful. but i wouldn't call it a celebration. it seems plainly the opposite to me.

music should only be about unambiguously good things

It's been many many years since I saw Elephant but recall it being unambiguously cold and disturbing

this is a good analogy

"Looking..." is only ironic in the discrepancy between form and content, i.e. the gap between the lyrics and pretty hooks/danceable rhythm.

hmm I actually think the song has much more 'bite' towards school shooters than this thread is crediting it with. there's obviously a deep irony, not apologia, to the line about the shooter 'looking for somebody to love'. Specifically this lyrical couplet I think is pretty strong evidence that the song is not overtly about sympathy (especially when combined with the perspective of the survivors that Brad highlighted):

"You gotta show me how to push
If you don't want a shove"
Are the words of a young man already damned
lookin for somebody to love

he's directly indicting the circular logic of the incel shooter

I also think that what makes it *feel* problematic *is exactly what makes the song is most powerfully effective*

The songs that he's playing off of, in terms of energy and stlye -- Rick Springfield? Billy Idol? Don Henley? idk -- are so ingrained with a kind of mythos, the very meaning of the titular chorus, is so much a part of built in logics of gender roles and entitlement and -- when you hear these chords, this energy, you've been trained through forty years of pop culture to shift into understanding that you're supposed to find somebody to love, that you've earned it, etc.

This song directly undermines it, not in a way that telegraphs 'sense of humor' or 'edgelord' to me, but in a way that actually indicts the very culture of automatic responses to certain chords & song structures & phrases, that the very nature of pop music *enabling* the kind of alienation towards other people by trying to fit everyone into one-size-fits-all boxes, is reinforced by certain emotional notes that songs like this play in the past, and continue to loom over our worldviews.

By undermining that, I feel like the song is something that feels extremely contemporary, rather than retro, in a way that makes it seem so much more politically pointed

I think that "inside my mind" did something similar -- the chords are, while not the same as, evocative of "Baba O'Riley", and I feel like turning that into a song that's about ... well, its not about abuse, per se, but about the entire spectrum of gendered entitlement, from "I deserve to know what she is thinking" all the way to spousal murder, and pinning it to this chords that are so associated with being a young, free, liberated teen (in a wasteland, admittedly, but I always thought the song felt more liberating idk)...he's combining this sense of liberation with this sense of violence in a way that feels very subversive

Deej absolutely OTM. The song is ultimately an expression disgust at the weaponisation of the concept of ‘love’ and, and among other things, trying to point out that that weaponisation has a long history that is embedded in mass and popular culture, and that the extreme incel manifestation of it is only that, an extreme manifestation.

If anything, I think the song is less about trying to understand mass shooters than it is using them as a rhetorical device: the logical end point of Andrew Tate culture. And then making the point that we shouldn’t smugly assume that our own notions of romantic attachment are entirely uninfected.

In other words, the song is not asking us to identify with incel mass shooters; it’s arguing that at the level of culture we already do.

this is what matty said about the song in the interview or whatever that accompanies the album on apple music:

"If I'm going to talk about guns, it's probably good for me to talk about the thing that I probably understand or empathize with the most, which is that the only vocabulary or lexicon that we provide for young boys to assert their dominance in any position is one of such violence and destruction. There's a line that says 'You've got to show me how to push/If you don't want a shove,' which is me saying we have to try and figure this crisis out because there are so many young men that don't really have guidance, and a toxic masculinity is inevitable if we don't address the way we communicate with them."

Hence the release of the chorus.

Xpost

also this to vulture:

I think that it’s important because it’s the one song that is political. It’s a song about a school shooting, so it’s a stance in that sense, but in the way that “Love It If We Made It” got away with being what it was because it wasn’t pointing fingers — it was asking questions. It wasn’t saying, “You shouldn’t do this; we shouldn’t do this.” It was saying, “Should we be doing this? Is that okay? Do you like this image?”

“Looking for Somebody (to Love)” is about men. The place that I was coming from is that it’s very easy, and maybe fair, to demonize some incel dressed as the Joker who goes and fucking shoots up a school, right? Of course they’re a psychopath — they’re fucking whatever. But in the second verse of the song, I think what I’m saying is that if the only vocabulary that we give young men to be assertive is one of such destruction and domination and violence, then a toxic masculinity, in some forms, normally in underfunded parts of countries and forgotten parts of countries, is maybe an inevitability. I think that we need to look at the crisis of masculinity a bit more seriously and a bit more head-on. It does tend to be young white boys who spend too much time on the internet that are doing most of that terrorism in America. And I’m interested to keep that conversation going because I don’t know what the reason is, but I’ve got a sense.

The circularity of the lyric -- the way it also doubles back, the way the POV switches from subject to object -- for some reason reminded me of this great poem..

btw these are the bits of Ann's essay that resonated:

Dirtbagism remains an unstable category years after it was first codified, big enough to include many variations. Today, it mainly flourishes in three distinct ways, all of which surface in Healy's songs. First, there's the comic version, the teenage masturbator he celebrates and gently chides in satires like "Part of the Band." This is the dirtbag as innocent youth, unable to articulate ambition or realize even modest desires, but not too concerned about those things. This heartwarming creature, also embodied in the "teenage dirtbag" TikTok trend and by mulletted doll Eddie Munson on Stranger Things, is all innocence and aimlessness, a hyperlink to more relaxed, if mostly imaginary, good times. He defuses male power by laughing at it through a sativa haze.

A second way to imagine the dirtbag is as an emotionally driven, harried, somewhat broken, idiosyncratic man who's gone off the grid in pursuit of a passion that compromises his ability to fulfill the norms of success. This is Matty Healy to a T, telling his family in "Wintering" that he'll barely be back for Christmas, sending sincere but basically useless apologies for the state of the earth to kids half his age in "The 1975." The soulful dirtbag is the type most often seen on prestige television, in inexhaustible variations that have expanded the role and brought it up to date for a culture that values a multiracial and sexually fluid ideal. In fact, it was Donald Glover who arguably conjured the current version of this dirtbag into existence in the groundbreaking dramedy Atlanta — from his own character of Earn, ambitious but self-sabotaging, to LaKeith Stanfield's dandyish wild card Darius, to the thrillingly unmooored and increasingly androgynous cool girl Van, so beautifully realized by Zazie Beets.

Genuinely appreciate the thoughtful dialogue on this (!) and don't want to keep banging my drum when everyone else seems to have a different pov but the direct quotes from Healy do not assuage my concerns. I am all for grappling with the social determinants of incel culture, toxic masculinity, etc. but no, it is not fucking inevitable, and no, I do not have to be sympathetic to mass murders of children, regardless of the home life they had or the part of the country they grew up in or whatever else he thinks may be the cause. And more importantly, I do not find it artistic or clever or brave or whatever word you all seem to find appealing about this to put these thoughts in a euphoric pop song.

I'll shut up now. Thanks all...

I haven't heard the song, but I agree w/Indexed re: Healey's quotes above... "underfunded parts of countries and forgotten parts of countries" doesn't apply to, say, Columbine, Isla Vista, Aurora... and tying a critique of "culture" to these extreme psychopaths with easy access to weapons feels sketchy. Whatever the merits of the song, I think he may be over his head in these interviews.

I do not find it artistic or clever or brave or whatever word you all seem to find appealing about this to put these thoughts in a euphoric pop song.

― Indexed, Monday, October 17, 2022 4:25 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I said subversive. The associations we have to euphoria in songs typically about looking for somebody to love are already manipulations themselves. That you associate them with euphoria is the entire straightjacket his song seems to be trying to escape, a learned association that promises euphoria in a world that can’t possibly deliver it. And when extremists are denied it, they react with horrific violence. This is not apologia, it’s the recognition of complicity to structures that incentivize brutality. The euphoria is not a natural state, it is something we’re taught we can buy or we can earn or take, or are entitled to. His use of it to shake free of its associations gives a an actual feeling of empowerment Imo, because it says you can reject these scripts entirely

TFW When no GF is significantly less nuanced than this and is pretty obviously rightwing propaganda. it is all about normalizing violent responses from white men to the same issues of inequality and anomie everyone is dealing with. trash.

this, while better, falls to the same general problem of most over-identification as critique which ends up celebrating its object, but that's just the hedonistic core of all art irrespective of intent and a danger to anyone who attempts it

I really dont see how this is 'celebrating' it -- he clearly finds it repulsive!

your association of these chord changes and 'vibes' with 'celebration' are exactly what is being pointed to...the manipulative nature of such

Perhaps this goes without saying but it's also not the case that drawing links between mass shootings, incel culture, toxic masculinity more broadly and then the way in which aspects of toxic masculinity are deeply engrained within aspects of popular culture's presentation of love and romance is... giving gun culture, the gun industry and the gun lobby a free pass. This is not like saying "this shooting was caused by marilyn manson not guns".

I think to the extent that this needs to be explicit, it's in the aspects of the lyrics which many people probably find most upsetting, the focus on the physicality of the violence, the celebratory "bang bang bang" etc. This boils down to the image of "a supreme gentleman / with a gun in his hand", and the way that this is couplet broadly ironic (how can holding a gun equate with gentility?) but narrowly consistent within the logic of toxic masculinity and its notion of social hierarchies devoid of ethics or even the figleaf of chivalry (the point of the song being: chivalry is a lie). The weaponisation of romance finds its purest and most awful expression in the literal deployment of weapons.

there are lots of songs from the perspective of killers, serial killers or otherwise. I think there's something specific to this type of killer that makes it extra unpleasant. too close to home, too contemporary, something like that.

anyway, just heard the album for the first time, and I think it's only okay. or at least not too much jumped out at me as working at the level of the past few. not bad by any stretch, but maybe a little too musically MOR for my tastes. certainly the '80s music signifiers seemed more on the nose than usual.