The 1975’s Matty Healy says the pop band “could” make heavy music – they just don’t want to.
The singer/guitarist makes the claim in conversation with the Doom Scroll Podcast. He reflects on the band’s early days in the mid-2000s, saying they were hated by certain listeners for not fitting the trendy post-punk revival characteristics of the time.
“What they were saying is, a band has to be from an economically deprived place in order to have authenticity,” Healy comments (via Guitar.com). “It needs to be kind of gritty. It needs to reference, at the time, the aesthetics of post-punk. So like, you know, all of your Joy Division, industrialisation, Thatcherism, brutalism, all those kinds of things. And we just didn’t adhere to any of that…”
- "I get a kick out of pissing off the purists." From winding up death metal legend Glen Benton to chaotic live shows in their underpants, Chat Pile are one of metal's wildest new bands
- "Slipknot took care of us!" Knocked Loose's Bryan Garris on rubbing shoulders with metal icons, taking hardcore mainstream and what comes next
Healy goes on, alleging The 1975 were disliked for “essentially being a band that was the opposite of heavy”. He points to hardcore punk favourites Refused, who released the pioneering The Shape Of Punk To Come shortly before breaking up, suggesting they were so extreme that anything after that would feel like diminishing returns.
“Refused, they split up because they were politically so different,” the frontman says. “And in their last show, the cops came. It makes me want to cry; I get chills thinking about it. The cops came in, and all of their fans turned around and shouted the line from Rather Be Dead: ‘I’d rather be alive.’ And they’re just shouting, ‘I’d rather be alive. I’d rather be alive,’ as Refused physically disbanded.”
He continues: “So when I saw that, I thought, ‘I can’t do something heavy that touches on that.’ Because for me… unless you’re Glassjaw, Converge, Refused, or further than that, heavy is fucking lame.”
Healy finishes by saying The 1975 “could do heavy all day long” if they really wanted to, but they chose against it “because it wasn’t new”.
The 1975 released their latest album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language, in 2022. Healy recently appeared on the Charli XCX remix album Brat And It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat. Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst was seemingly teased to feature on the record as well, yet didn’t appear.
Refused split in 1998 but reformed in 2012. The band recently announced a North American farewell tour for 2025 and said they’re parting ways again due to creative differences.
