Music / The 1975

aka: The Nineteen Seventy Five

L to R: Adam Hann, Matty Healy, George Daniel, and Ross MacDonald.

Go down
Soft sound
Midnight
Car lights
Playing with the air
Breathing in your hair
Go down
Soft sound
Step into your skin? I'd rather jump in your bones
Taking up your mouth, so you breathe through your nose.

— "The 1975", the intro of the band's first three albums^note All of the first tracks of their albums thus far have been titled "The 1975", but the above lyrics were swapped for original lyrics from Notes on a Conditional Form onward.

Influences:

• John Hughes, Talking Heads, My Bloody Valentine, Michael Jackson, Ride, Christina Aguilera, D'Angelo, Boards of Canada, Sigur Rós, The Blue Nile, Peter Gabriel, Prince, Roberta Flack...

The 1975 are an English band formed in 2012 in Wilmslow, Cheshire and now based in Manchester, United Kingdom. The band consists of singer/lyricist/rhythm guitarist/frontman Matty Healy, drummer/producer George Daniel, lead guitarist Adam Hann, and bassist Ross MacDonald.

While their sound can be somewhat summarized as pop rock, it is known for its eclecticism and wide array of influences, taking leads from genres such as New Wave, Power Pop, Alternative Dance, and Sophisti-Pop. Among the numerous influences the band has publicly cited over the years, Matty has stated that his greatest influence is the filmmaker John Hughes.

The band is known not only for their unique sound but also for their specifically crafted image and lyrics. Around their rise to fame, the band requested that all paparazzi photos of them be shot and released in black and white, and all their music videos up until the re-recorded album version of "Sex" were black and white as well. The band's lyrics, principally written by Matty, explore ideas such as sex, love, drugs, hope, death, and fear as experienced in contemporary life, often through central subjects like the Internet, youth/millennial culture, masculinity, and politics. These lyrics often have a witty, dark (in various senses), and frequently self-aware tone towards their subjects and even themselves, which Matty has described as postmodern.

This tone extends into the public persona (especially the stage persona) of Matty, which has become one of the most (in)famous aspects of the band. He is known for playing a "meta-layered" version of himself during shows, intended to serve as a commentary on ideas including fame and the concept of a rock star itself, from what he has described as a want to play with audiences' awareness of rock star cliches. Apart from doing things such as actively acknowledging the setup of the show and his role in it, his onstage behavior has included chain smoking, drinking red wine while singing (often straight from the bottle), eating raw steaks, fondling himself, kissing fans (or sucking their thumbs), and making a number of statements (some of them satirical or deliberately provocative) that have led to recurring controversies, in some cases due to people taking his actions at face value.

The band began when Matty^note who is also the son of actors Denise Welch and Tim Healy met the other members in high school. Through a community organization, they began playing gigs in 2002. Matty was originally the group’s drummer but became the vocalist once George Daniel was recruited. Some of the group's older work can be found under the names Talkhouse, the Slowdown, Bigsleep, and most prominently Drive Like I Do. Their current name was inspired by a Beat poetry notebook that Matty found on holiday which was dated “1 June, The 1975”. Matty stated that his attraction to the name was through finding it to be "a strong use of language".

After almost a decade of playing together, The 1975 began professionally releasing music in 2012. Between that year and the next, they released four EPs — Facedown, Sex, Music for Cars, and IV — that all saw success, ranging from local radio airplay to eventual major mainstream success and appearances on the UK singles chart. In the years leading up to and throughout the release of their EPs, the band toured extensively and supported Muse, The Rolling Stones, and The Neighbourhood.

In September 2013, The 1975 released their self-titled debut album, which debuted at #1 on the UK Albums Chart. Their second album, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it, was released in 2016 and again debuted at #1. Matty initially stated that their third album would be titled Music for Cars after the EP, but it wound up being named A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships and released in November 2018. He also announced that there would be another album to be released in 2020, called Notes on a Conditional Form. Notes was followed by 2022's Being Funny In A Foreign Language.

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Lineup:

• Matthew “Matty” Healy (vocals, guitar, piano)
• Adam Hann (guitar, backing vocals, keyboards)
• Ross MacDonald (bass, backing vocals, keyboards)
• George Daniel (drums, backing vocals)

Touring musicians:

Current

• John Waugh (saxophone, piano, keyboards, synthesisers) (2013-)
• Jamie Squire (synthesisers, keyboards, piano, rhythm guitar, backing vocals) (2015-)
• Polly Money – rhythm guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (2022–)
• Gabrielle Marie King – percussion (2023–)

Former

• Taitlyn Jaiy – backing vocals, dancing (2018–2020)
• Kaylee Jaiy – backing vocals, dancing (2018–2020)
• Carly Holt – guest vocals (2022)
• Rebekah Rayner – percussion (2022–2023)

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The 1975's discography:

• Facedown EP (2012)
• Sex EP (2012)
• Music For Cars EP (2013)
• IV EP (2013)
• The 1975 (2013)
  Singles: "The City" (2012/2013), "Sex" (2012/2013), "Chocolate" (2013), "Girls" (2013), "Settle Down" (2014), "Robbers" (2014), "Heart Out" (2014)
• "Medicine" (2014)
• I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it (2016)
  Singles: "Love Me" (2015), "UGH!" (2015), "The Sound" (2016), "A Change of Heart" (2016), "Somebody Else" (2016)
• A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (2018)
  Singles: "Give Yourself a Try" (2018), "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME" (2018), "Sincerity is Scary" (2018), "It's Not Living (If It's Not with You)" (2018)
• Notes on a Conditional Form (2020)
  Singles: "The 1975" (2019), "People" (2019), "Frail State of Mind" (2019), "Me & You Together Song" (2020), "The Birthday Party" (2020), "Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America" (2020), "If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)" (2020), "Guys" (2020)
• Being Funny in a Foreign Language (2022)
  Singles: "Part of the Band" (2022), "Happiness" (2022), "I'm In Love With You" (2022), "All I Need to Hear" (2022)

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We're never gonna quit troping, no, we're never gonna quit troping, no...

• Affectionate Parody: In the video for "Love Me", as well as some of their live shows, Matty tends to purposefully imitate frontmen like Jim Morrison, Robert Plant and Mick Jagger.
• Album Intro Track: Every album intro thus far has been titled "The 1975", and the band has experimented with the role these intros play.
  • The first three albums' intros all used the same lyrics, and following the first intro, each future iteration was revamped to match the style of its album and introduce it to the listener. The self-titled album's intro had a gentle ambient feel, I like it when you sleep's intro added a choir and additional synth elements for a fuller sound, and A Brief Inquiry's intro used a more experimental structure largely built around heavily stacked and manipulated vocals of Matty. Matty has summarized the intros' purpose as the band "checking in" on the listener, and cited inspiration from the distinct startup sounds of video game consoles.
    "What we’re doing is kind of like checking in every time. You open the door and you see someone you haven’t seen for what- in person. But hey, your hair’s different, you know? That kind of thing."
  • Notes on a Conditional Form replaced the lyrics entirely with a speech on climate change by Greta Thunberg, reportedly the result of the band striving to find "the most modern statement" to kick off the album, while Being Funny replaced them again with new lyrics that have been described as Matty "holding himself accountable, and pointing out his flaws".
• Alcoholic Parent: "She Lays Down" is about Matty's mother, who had issues with alcoholism and drug addiction while he was growing up.
• Ambiguously Bi: Discussed in "The Sound":
  "She said 'I've got a problem with your shoes and your tunes, but I might move in' and 'I thought that you were straight, now I'm wondering.'"
• Arc Words: "Soft sound" in their debut, and "lost my head" in the second.
  • The phrase "poetry is in the streets in full living colour" and variants thereof has appeared in several of their music videos.
• Auto-Tune: The 1975 haven't been shy with pitch correction in the past, but used the software's famous "zero" feature on "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME" and "I Like America & America Likes Me" on A Brief Inquiry.
• Big Brother Instinct: "Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You?" is about how the protagonist feels responsible for his little brother following their parents' divorce.
• Big Rock Ending: The last four measures of "Sex" gradually slow to a hault as the entire song collapses in on itself, before ending with a synthesizer-based take on this trope.
• Black Comedy: As a lyricist, Matty has the tendency to write about serious topics in flippant, sometimes sarcastic ways. Take 'Menswear', which is about a wedding going rapidly downhill, and includes the protagonist snorting cocaine in the bathroom and telling the bride he never really liked her in his speech. All of this is Played for Laughs.
  • Songs like 'UGH!', 'M.O.N.E.Y.' and 'Paris' all revolve around drug addiction but have somewhat humorous lines/aspects.
• Book Ends: "Sex" opens and ends with a loud whirring sound.
• British Rockstar: Matty, although his playing up to the stereotypes of this trope is mostly irony.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Adam.
• Call-Back:
  • "A Change Of Heart" references lyrics from "The City," "Robbers," and "Sex."
  • "Lostmyhead" is based entirely around the final stanza of "Facedown".
• Careful with That Axe: Matty's a tenor, so this is expected naturally.
  • Their first album's most chilling (and saddening) moment comes from his epic scream on "Robbers": Now everybody's DEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAD!!
  • "WELL I THINK I'VE GONE MAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!!"
  • The verses of "People", as well as its final chorus, consist of Matty screaming.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • "People" drops "fuck" several times in the chorus.
  • "Yeah I Know" repeats the "Hit that shit, go hit that shit" 14 times, for a total of 28 uses of "shit".
• Cover Song: They've done a few of these. The most well-known examples are their covers of "Sorry" by Justin Bieber, "Rather Be" by Clean Bandit, "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction, "By Your Side" by Sade, and "thank u, next" by Ariana Grande.
  • Inverted; several artists have covered their songs, including Lorde ("Somebody Else"), Charli XCX and Christine and the Queens ("TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME"), and Rina Sawayama ("Love It If We Made It").
• Darker and Edgier: Although The 1975 has its darker moments, it mostly sticks to the themes of romance and heartbreak, whereas I like it when you sleep primarily deals with the themes of mental illness, drug addiction and death. It's somewhat ironic, considering the aesthetic for the second album is much brighter and more colourful, and the first album's aesthetic was monochrome and moody.

• Deliberately Monochrome: All of their videos from their first album, except for the second version of "Sex".
• Dope Slap: "M.O.N.E.Y.":
  "I'm searchin' for you, mate, your jaw's all over the place / Can't talk, quick slap in the face..."
• Downer Ending:
  • The final three songs on I like it when you sleep... are all Tear Jerker songs about heroin use, Matty's dead grandmother and his mother's cocaine addiction, respectively.
  • The last song on their Self-Titled Album is a Lonely Piano Piece.
  • 'Robbers', especially if you subscribe to the interpretation that they're the same couple in 'A Change Of Heart'.
• Drugs Are Bad:
  • "M.O.N.E.Y." Ironically, on the album this song is on, this song is followed by "Chocolate". See Drugs Are Good below.
  • "UGH!" describes a cocaine addict (aka Matty referring to himself in the third person) making an ass out of themselves at a party.
  • Several songs on A Brief Inquiry detail Matty's heroin addiction and subsequent rehab. "I Couldn’t Be More in Love" is even about his fear that the 1975 fanbase will call it quits by the time that he is done rehab.
• Drugs Are Good: Replace all instances of the word "chocolate" with "marijuana" in 'Chocolate', and it makes incredible sense.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: "Sex".
• Fading into the Next Song: On The 1975, "Heart Out" —> "Settle Down" —> "Robbers"
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You?"
• Fan Disservice: Watching Matty masturbate/make sex faces in the "Somebody Else" video should be something you want to see, but the mind screw element is difficult to get over, making it seem unsettling and incredibly fucked up instead.
• Fun with Subtitles: In concert, the A Brief Inquiry version of "The 1975" has its lyrics displayed one word at a time on the backdrop screen. The lone piano chord that strikes after the line, "Go down go down, soft sound," is given a full screen "(PIANO)".
• The Gadfly: Matty has received notoriety within the music press for just this.
• Genre-Busting: The band's specific combination of 80s Synth-Pop, 00s Indie Rock, Electronic Music and Art Rock is commonly referred to as "Shiver Pop," in some music circles.
• Genre Roulette: Their debut album The 1975 and the preceding EPs are routed in Indie Rock with elements of Ambient music, Post-Rock, Shoegazing, 80s-style Synth-Pop and Electronic Music.
  • I like it when you sleep further incorporates Synth-Pop while dipping into Art Rock, Sophisti-Pop, Neo Soul and, in one instance, a full-on gospel song.
  • A Brief Inquiry toned down the 80s sheen of the two previous albums, incorporating 90s Britpop and R&B, as well as a few genre exercises in a post-punk song, a UK garage song and a 1930s jazz ballad.
  • Notes, outside of its three-song opening run (which includes a noise rock song), oscillates mainly between country-tinged songs and UK garage bangers. The second half of the album features, in rough order: a 90's R&B/gospel song; a song that samples legends Hiroshi Sato and The Temptations; two progressive deep house songs that wouldn't be out of place on the immense and influental Anjunadeep record label; a song heavily indebted to modern pop tropes with pitched down vocals; and the return of the "shiver pop" and late-in-the-runtime piano ballad unique to I like it when you sleep.
• Going Cold Turkey: 'UGH!' centres around the narrator failing to do this.
• Grief Song: "Nana" is a pretty straightforward example.
• Hidden Track: "Milk", at the end of "You".
• Indecipherable Lyrics: Occurs often, due to Matty's rather eccentric voice.
• Intercourse with You: A handful of their songs are about this trope, including 'Sex'. It should be noted, though, that few if any of them are just about the act, instead usually being about varying couple dynamics.
• Irony: The main hook of the song "Talk!", which is basically shouted:
  Why you talk so loud? / Why you talk so?
  • The ordering of "M.O.N.E.Y." and "Chocolate" on The 1975 album. See Drugs Are Bad.
  • Their music is influenced more by the 1980s and the 1990s, rather than the 1970s, but "Pressure" kind of sounds 1970s-ish, what with the guitars, effects and saxophone.
  • "If I Believe You" is an anti-religious song... with a gospel choir in it.
• It Will Never Catch On: The band were notoriously rejected by every single major label, who claimed they were too eclectic and radio would hate them. As of 2016, they've had six top 40 singles, and are frequently praised for their eclectic sound.
• Lampshaded Double Entendre: The opening line of Being Funny in a Foreign Language.
  This'll get bigger, if you know what I mean.
• Last Note Nightmare: "The 1975" on The 1975 ends with a loud clang, detracting away from the song's ethereal feel. It's also heard briefly at the beginning of the song, and also twice in "Anobrain".
  • Book Ended with "Sex", which opens and closes with an ear-shattering... moan of some sort. At the very end of the song, however, after the moan ends, it closes with a nice guitar chord.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The protagonist in "M.O.N.E.Y." is apparently so bad that even Matty himself calls him out for what he's done. See Lyrical Dissonance.
• Leitmotif: The "Music for Cars" motif is a major-add 4 chord^note eg. in the C Major scale, C, E, F and G (or Do, Mi, Fa and So, if you prefer) played via twinkling piano and harp notes. The motif appears several times across both A Brief Inquiry and Notes (albums both released under the banner title "Music for Cars"):
  • A Brief Inquiry: "How to Draw/Petrichor", "Be My Mistake", "The Man Who Married a Robot/Love Theme", "Surrounded by Heads and Bodies"
  • Notes: "The 1975", "Streaming", "The Birthday Party", "Guys"
• List Song: "Love It If We Made It", to the extent that it's been summarized as the 21st-century equivalent of "We Didn't Start the Fire" by many. Through a stream-of-consciousness style with lyrics formatted like buzzwords and headlines, the song touches on — among many other topics — the commodification of black lives in America, the profiting off the poor that fuels the prison industrial complex, the Syrian refugee crisis, internet apathy, the dismissal of facts as opinions, and a verbatim quote from then-American president Donald Trump that many took as him confirming and bragging about having sexually assaulted women.
• Lonely Piano Piece: "Is There Somebody Who Could Watch You?".
• Lyrical Dissonance: They are very fond of this trope.
  • "The 1975", which nearly becomes a gospel song in its I like it when you sleep version, is about receiving oral sex.
  • "M.O.N.E.Y." is an upbeat funk song about a boy who wastes his money on cocaine to be cool, but eventually gets hurt badly by it ("Tabs with unlimited 0's / New clothes, bloody nose / Powders and walking back home / Has he got enough weed? No / Broken phone, retching on the floor alone..."), is even called out by the narrator ("I can't believe that we're talking about him!") and eventually gets arrested ("I'm searching you, mate, your jaw's all over the place... / Look, the dog won't bark if you don't lark about..."). The song even has Matty sighing at the end like he's just so completely done with the boy and his misdeeds.
  • "UGH!" is a very catchy Scritti Politti-style song about a cocaine relapse. The video, which consists of bright lights and Matty's dancing, doesn't hurt, either.
  • "A Change Of Heart" is a chill pop song about a relationship that's falling apart because the people involved are finally seeing each other as they really are.
  • "The Sound," one of the band's biggest singalongs and a standout single, is also about seeing someone else's true self after the relationship has crumbled, but bonus points for the pre-chorus line of, "You're so conceited, I / said that I love you / What does it matter if I lie to you?"
  • "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME" is a fun dance-pop number about a really dysfunctional relationship: the narrator cheats on his girlfriend and lies to her, and they regularly fight.
  • "It's Not Living (If It's Not With You)" is a very upbeat song about Matty's heroin addiction.
• Machine Monotone: "The Man Who Married a Robot" is narrated by Siri.
• The Masochism Tango: Much of their music features this, although "Robbers" is the most obvious example.
• Metal Scream: "People" features one from Matty, unaccompanied.
• Mind Screw: The "Somebody Else" video. It opens with a 3 minute homage to David Lynch's Rabbits, for starters. The main plot is also hallucinatory, with parts of the video being revealed to have been a fiction of Matty's mind.
• Miniscule Rocking: "The 1975", "An Encounter", "12", "Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You?" and "Anobrain".
• Never Trust a Title: You'd think, understandably, "Please Be Naked" might be a song about sex, but instead, it's a lyric-less piano-based ambient piece, reminiscent of Brian Eno's recent album The Ship.
• No Accounting for Taste: "Paris" centres around a couple whose relationship hinges on their shared drug use, even though the narrator doesn't really seem to like his girlfriend at all.
  She's a pain in the nose, I'm a pain in woman's clothes, and you're a walking overdose in a greatcoat.
• Non-Appearing Title: "The 1975", "An Encounter", "Robbers", "Menswear", "12", "Antichrist", "The Ballad of Me and My Brain" and "Nana" among others.
• Ode to Intoxication: "Chocolate". See Drugs Are Good above. 'Paris' could also qualify, if you go by the interpretation that 'Paris' is really just a metaphor for hard drugs.
• On Three: Subverted in live performances of their concert closer, "The Sound". The audience is asked to go berserk for the guitar solo and final chorus "on the count of four." The countdown, as spelled out in giant letters on the backdrop screen, goes "ONE, TWO, FUCKING GO"
• One-Word Title: The majority of their songs early on. Some are even combinations of words, such as "Menswear" (as in 'men's wear', not 'men swear'), "Facedown", "fallingforyou" and "Lostmyhead".
• Platonic Life-Partners: Matty and George. When Matty began using drugs again, George personally got him back on track.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: "Guys", a song the band members wrote in honor of each other and their time together in the band.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • "You":
    And it's not my fault/that I fucked everybody here
  • "Sex":
    And I'm not trying to stop you, love/But if we can't do anything, we might as well just fuck.
  • "Heart Out":
    Your obsession with rocks and brown and fucking the whole town/is a reflection on your mental health.
  • "Girls":
    Well, shouldn't you be fucking with somebody your age instead of making changes?
  • "Somebody Else":
    'Get someone you want? Get someone you need?' Fuck that, get money.
  • "UGH!":
    I don't have the capacity to be fucking / You're meant to be helping me.
  • "Give Yourself A Try":
    And you'll make a lot of money and it's funny / 'Cause you'll move somewhere sunny and get addicted to drugs / And spend obscene amounts on fucking seeds and beans online
  • "Love It If We Made It" includes two — the opening line ("We're fucking in a car, shooting heroin / Saying controversial things just for the hell of it"), and the first line after the bridge ("'I moved on her like a bitch!'"), the latter being a direct quote from Donald Trump that resurfaced in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential campaign.
• Protest Song:
  • "Love It If We Made It" and "I Like America and America Likes Me" are more esoteric examples, with the former being compared to a modern-day "We Didn't Start The Fire" and the latter containing references to American gun violence.
  • The first two singles released from Notes on a Conditional Form are more straightforward examples.
    • The album's iteration of the band's self-titled intro "The 1975" contains a monologue from Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg in which she calls for civil disobedience and rebellion to bring about the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
    • "People" contains references to millennials through their idolization of Barack Obama, seemingly caring more about marijuana legalization than the climate crisis, and being complacent in the problems of the world and refusing to take them seriously, while also discussing failing economies and governments.
• Quirky Curls: Matty has naturally very zig-zaggy, all over the place curly hair, as well as the eccentric personality to match.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Several of the drug escapades and mental breakdowns detailed throughout I like it when you sleep and A Brief Inquiry happened in full or in part to lead singer Matty:
  • "UGH!" is an out-of-body experience about being on cocaine at a party, shifting between first- and second-person narration.
  • "She's American" references Matty's on-stage mental breakdown in Boston during their first tour.
  • "It's Not Living (If It's Not with You)" is a frank dicussion of Matty's time in rehab for heroin, speaking through the character of Danny.
  • "Surrounded by Heads and Bodies" is about a woman named Angela, whom Matty had grown up with on the same street, appearing in rehab alongside him.
  • "I Couldn't Be More in Love" is about Matty's frank concern that his life and band will entirely unravel once he enters rehab. The vocal take was recorded just before doing so, and the pain shows through.
• Rearrange the Song: The song "The 1975" opens each album, each time in a new variation that doubles as that album's mission statement:
  • The 1975 received a plaintive, indie rock version complete with a field recording that echoed their style at the time.
  • I like it when you sleep's version uses a choir and bass synth to sound lush and anthemic, highlighting the dramatic 80s sweeps throughout this album.
  • A Brief Inquiry's version is a straight recording of Matty singing alone with a piano, but the vocal is manipulated through a plug-in known as the Prismizer^note a device previously used by Frank Ocean and Bon Iver that generates multiple vocoded lines freely assignable to any pitch or chord in real-time, generating an impenetrable field of robotic Mattys, echoing the falsity in the wealth of online content that the album discusses.
• Religion Rant Song: Matty is infamous for his hatred of religion, even referring to religion as a disease. Both "Antichrist" and "If I Believe You" talk about how if God was real, he wouldn't allow Him or other people to suffer as they have. However he has since regretted this phase, refusing to play "Antichrist" live.
• Retraux: Matty says that the band's sound is influenced by John Hughes movies from the 1980s. On songs like "Sex", "Girls" or "Heart Out", it shows.
• Sampling: "Give Yourself A Try" samples its riff from Joy Division's "Disorder".
• Sanity Slippage Song: Both 'The Ballad of Me and My Brain' and 'lostmyhead' are pretty straight examples, although the former is much more comedic than the latter.
• Screw Yourself: The reveal for the video for 'Somebody Else'. See Mind Screw above.
• Self-Deprecation: A common theme.
  "Loving Someone": "I'm the Greek economy of cashing intellectual cheques."
• Self-Titled Album: Their debut.
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: One of the most notable modern examples.
• Shout-Out: The video for "Heart Out" could be seen as one to the "Badder" segment in Moonwalker, as it centers around a performance of the song done by kids at a talent show.
  • "You" to the Lesley Gore song "It's My Party", with the lyric "It's my party and I'll cry until it ends".
  • The extended intro in the video for "Somebody Else" is one to David Lynch's Rabbits.
  • The concert segments of the video for “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)” are a love letter to Stop Making Sense, complete with backup singers and “Danny” wearing David Byrne’s iconic white business suit.
• Shrinking Violet: Adam is by far the least talkative member of the band, as well as the most softly spoken.
• Singing Voice Dissonance: Matthew Healy speaks with a typical deep English-accented voice, but when he sings he has a much more high-pitched voice. His lower register was finally showcased on "Inside Your Mind".
  • Also when the band played a gig at Glastonbury in 2014. When "Robbers" played, a high-squeaky voice could be heard behind Healy's. It is assumed it is George Daniel's, despite George having a very, very deep speaking voice in real life.
• Stealth Insult: Word of God is that I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it is actually a backhanded compliment.
• Surprisingly Gentle Song: The band has a few examples, including "HSNCC" and "Is There Somebody To Watch You" (considering it’s the end track) from their self titled debut album, and there’s more:
  • ILIWYSFYASBYSUOI: "Nana, "She Lays Down", & "How To Draw".
  • ABIIOR: "The Man Who Married A Robot" & "Surrounded By Heads And Bodies".
  • NOACF: "Yeah I Know", "Streaming", & "The Birthday Party".
• Take That!: From "Love Me": "Caught up in fashion, Karcrashian panache/and a bag of bash for passion/You got a beautiful face but got nothing to say (oh!)"
  • Take That, Audience!: The lyric "As the crowd cheers for an overdose" from "Paris", which is possibly an allusion to this.
    • And once again in "She's American", satirising the sensationalist response from social media to incidents like the above video, as well as Matty's complete mental breakdown during a show in Boston:
    "Look, he's having a breakdown! Oh what a shame, I think he might die!"
  • Take That, Critics!: The entire premise of the video for "The Sound". As a band plays in a glass cube, onlookers dress in white appear to be miming the act of giving criticism. As pink title cards fill the screen with actual comments made about the band ("Unconvincing emo lyrics", "I only heard 'Chocolate' once but I hated it"), the band ends up swapping places with the critics as the cube fills with pink smoke.
• Those Two Guys: Adam and Ross.
• Three Minutes of Writhing: The "Girls" video is both a spoof on this trope, and a spin on Robert Palmer's series of videos involving a all-female backing band, specifically "Simply Irresistible".
• Through the Eyes of Madness: The "Somebody Else" video.
  • "The Ballad of Me and My Brain" details the narrator having some kind of psychotic breakdown, and it's revealed at the end that he's likely in some kind of mental hospital.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: George is apparently 'petrified of snakes'.
• Word Salad Lyrics: Subverted. Matty's lyrics can sometimes sound random, but they make sense in the context of the lyrics surrounding them.
• Word Salad Title: "She Way Out", "Intro/Set3", "Anobrain", "HNSCC", "Head.Cars.Bending".
• Worth Living For: The bookends of A Brief Inquiry, "Give Yourself a Try" and "I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)"; the latter has as a final lyric, "If you can't survive; just try".

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