The 1975
Matty Healy and three mates from Wilmslow built the most ambitious pop band of their generation - part Manchester, part everywhere, entirely divisive.
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The 1975 met at Wilmslow High School in Cheshire, which is technically Greater Manchester if you squint. Matty Healy, Ross MacDonald, Adam Hann, and George Daniel started playing together as teenagers and went through several names before landing on The 1975. They signed to Dirty Hit and released their self-titled debut in 2013. It went to number one.
What happened next was unusual for a Manchester band. Instead of sticking to one lane, they swerved constantly – the follow-up, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It, threw in ambient electronics, 80s pop, gospel, and whatever else they fancied. A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships went further. Notes on a Conditional Form was sprawling. Being Funny in a Foreign Language pulled back to something tighter. Every record was different. Every record divided opinion.
Healy is the lightning rod. He talks too much, courts controversy, oscillates between self-aware and self-indulgent. But he writes hooks and the live show is enormous – Manchester Arena multiple times over, plus AO Arena shows that sell out fast. The band’s relationship with the city is genuine if complicated. They’re not Northern Quarter indie kids or Salford working class; they’re suburban Cheshire via the Manchester music scene’s infrastructure.
Love them or find them insufferable, The 1975 are the biggest guitar band Manchester has produced since Oasis. The sound is completely different – slick, referential, restless – but the ambition is the same. They want to be the biggest band in the world, and for a while there, they nearly were.
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