The 1975 attempted to blend shoegaze guitars with ‘80s cheeseball power ballads on “Inside Your Mind.” It was a noble attempt! The guitar lick sounds great! But the track sadly stays at one level throughout, so the song never achieves liftoff. It’s not a track I ever return to, but I’ll admit that “Nana” has a nice melody and is an appropriately reverent and pretty tribute to Healy’s dead grandmother. But “,” one of the band’s first attempts at that style, proves that it took a lot of practice to perfect that sound, because yikes - this is rough. Later in their career, The 1975 would excel at off-kilter electronic jams. Is this meant to be from the perspective of Dwight Schrute? The only interesting things about this shuffling ballad are A) the very metal song title that doesn’t match the actual tune at all, and B) Healy sings this song about a woman named Angela. #63: “Surrounded By Heads and Bodies” ( A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, 2018) Speaking of boring late-album songs from Notes that should’ve been left on the cutting room floor! At least this one has a halfway decent melody. This overly reverb-y nothing of song is a prime example of something that should have been cut from the overlong Notes On A Conditional Form tracklist. The band’s first boring closing track, way back on their debut EP! Considering how great Facedown’s other three songs are, this aimless ballad is a major disappointment. But The 1975 were clearly not the band to do it, judging by how boring and forgettable “She Lays Down” is.
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Postnatal depression is a real issue, and one that should be explored more in song. #67: “She Lays Down” ( I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, 2016) But if Barney aggressively, and unsuccessfully, tried to ripoff Bon Iver’s autotuned ballads. The actual song, unfortunately, is a treacly mess that sounds like something from Barney & Friends. The backstory behind “Don’t Worry” - lead singer/lyricist Matty Healy’s dad wrote it for his family ages ago, and now Healy’s recording his own version of it - is cute. #68: “Don’t Worry” ( Notes On A Conditional Form, 2020)
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A bland, hookless piano ballad like “Somebody” is the opposite of that. One of the most appealing aspects of The 1975 is their bold, in-your-face style. The bottom of this list will be mostly comprised of the painfully boring, minimalist ballads that The 1975 used to end their albums with (thankfully, their last two album closers were phenomenal…we’ll get to them much later). #69: “Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You” ( The 1975, 2013) (For the record, the best version of the song is their second attempt, although I respect the hell out of the Thunberg monologue.) Because three of them are variations on the same song, and the fourth is a spoken-word track with climate activist Greta Thunberg, these won’t be on the list either. I’m not ranking those - Matty Healy has to sing on the track for it to count.ģ) The 1975 also begin every album with a self-titled song. And with the recent release of their hit-and-miss fourth record, Notes On A Conditional Form, there’s not a better time to do just that.ġ) To make the list, songs had to appear on one of The 1975′s four albums, or their four debut EPs (which I normally wouldn’t count, but they contain many of the band’s essential songs).Ģ) The 1975 love to include instrumental interludes on their records. Because of that, and because the Manchester band love to dabble in nearly every musical style on the planet (except hip-hop, which is probably for the best), a song-by-song evaluation is the best way to judge The 1975′s catalog. All of their records, even their most consistent one (2018′s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships) have at least a couple filler songs.
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However, despite their ability to pen generation-defining anthems and incredibly sticky pop hits, The 1975 have a fatal flaw: they overstuff their albums. They’re also the most important, and arguably the best, band of the last five years or so.
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The 1975 are unabashedly political, wildly eclectic in musical style, and masters of striking the perfect balance between strange and accessible. Ranking The 1975′s songs, from worst to best