the 1975

"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.

poor word choice on my part (although xp to tim i guess it is a relevant concept somehow lol)

tbc i don't think healy is secretly into it, like lee moyers is. i am just saying that the manipulative power of art you rightly note can't be put so easily aside by the intellect, or repurposed simply via the willpower of the artist. of course none of this means that this issue shouldn't be tackled in song form. just that it's hard to do!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5l3Lw0gSP8kFzZbZsK8uG3

podcast on the making of the album, includes a bunch of demos

lol the hold steady/springsteen version of "part of the band"

lmao "the 1975" started off as an electronic track (that sounded way more like lcd soundsystem but didn't yet have the piano) built around samples from that video of bjork disassembling a tv

how did it sound even more like lcd without the all my friends piano haha

it's at ~33:35 in the podcast, it's more like "someone great" or something than "all my friends" at that stage

& the piano came from a failed attempt at a steve reich-inspired version of the original "the 1975" for abiior!

matty knows balearic as "poolside"

oh damn they play a demo for a completely unreleased song "this feeling" at 1:05:51 which was cut from the album at last minute because it reminded matty too much of his recent breakup. they promise it'll be released eventually though

"it's about time" slaps lmao

at the point in the podcast where matty says "fuck, maybe this is better??!"

would pay good money for something like a the 1975 exploded demo box set

I *just* listened to the Song Exploder on "The Birthday Party" and thought "I could listen to Matty and George talk about this kind of stuff all day"

matty has said he wants to put out a demos collection at some point but matty also says a lot of shit that he doesn't get around to realising for one reason or another

matty is such an active participant in the mythos of his own band & of culture in general that i’m confident we’ll get expansive box sets or demo compilations of all these albums at some point

just a month ago he was talking about wanting to put out a demos compilation covering their whole career in the near future, i'm sure it'll happen eventually (& will be a treasure trove) but idk if it'll be as soon as he was intending because he gets sidetracked so easily

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Tjr9ux8Wk

anyone else going to mohegan sun in CT b/c the madison square garden show is stupid expensive?

I'm seeing them at the same venue in Chicago as I did three years ago for probably 3x the price. Don't remember exactly what I paid then but it wasn't this.

Last minute of that Part of the Band video is lovely.

I saw them at the Aragon in ... 2016? United Center in 2019. Advantage of United Center is room for a bigger set/light rig, etc. Advantage of Aragon is smaller. Alas, don't know if I'll get to see them this time.

anyone else going to mohegan sun in CT b/c the madison square garden show is stupid expensive?

― adam, Thursday, October 20, 2022 3:11 PM (two hours ago)

i'm thinking about it!

that Spotify "Tape Notes" interview is gold. i'd listen to that about every song they've ever recorded.

the bridge from the Benjamin Leftwich song bit! so interesting. and i totally thought the more electronic "The 1975" was cooler than the one that made the album.

yeah that interview is a gold mine

yeah I need to go back and check their other episode (and maybe some others). and pls make a demos compilation, the 1975

the abiior episode isn't quite as good but still a worthwhile listen

OK, some thoughts, now that I've spent a bit more time with it. It's good, of course; I can't imagine these guys releasing a *bad* record at this point, just a redundant record, which this one *maybe* comes close to being, but not really to its detriment. Like I told one of my kids, the 1975 are always interesting and compelling, like what Harry Styles seems to be up to at his best if he weren't so dead set on playing it safe and boring. I can't wait to listen to the deep dive podcast or whatever it is, because I want to know how these songs evolved into that they are. I think "Part of the Band" remains a clear standout, I want to know how that one specifically grew into this form.

That said, I like horns on records, and specifically saxophone (hell, I love Springsteen), but I really hate how much this album leans on the sax as a sort of '80s signifier. Which of course the band has done before, but it feels a little annoying here, for some reason. I dunno, could be just me.

Oh, and "Looking for Somebody (To Love)," it finally clicked what it reminded me of: Warren Zevon's "Excitable Boy." Except that song is twisted and ott, and this one is very real, which makes it less cartoonish and more disturbing. And teeters on the brink of poor taste.

They go into a lot of detail about "Part of the Band" on the podcast, so definitely give it a listen

Now having giving this album a few listens, it feels like it ends so fast. I mean, it's a pretty normal album length, just not for this band! The feeling is almost more like an EP. I don't think that's really a bad thing though, it just speaks to what a pleasant easy listen the album is

Yeah it feels like “Human Too” should be like a midsection pause for breath before the second half but instead you’re almost at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws13A_bHXkY

the "even more LCD" version of "The 1975" from BFIAFL

love this album so much

So do I. After the last one I was hoping they would push it further into the electronic/garage direction, and while the "four guys playing in a room" thing of this one is the exact opposite of that, it was absolutely the correct move. This one is pure joy and it just breezes by.

Kind of obsessed with how subtle the drum track on "Human Too" is--the ghostly tambourine (or hi-hat?) taps that flit in and out, the shaker that lifts up the last chorus.