© Lorne Thomson
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Matty Healy's best lyrics from The 1975's Notes On A Conditional Form
Matty Healy is one of the most interesting and witty lyricists around. Here are some of our favourite lines from Notes On A Conditional Form
The 1975 have finally released their sprawling, genre-bending and long-delayed fourth album, Notes On A Conditional Form. It's another masterpiece from a band who strive to cover the here and now – whether addressing climate change (on their album opener, which features a speech from Greta Thunberg), civil unrest or even being stuck indoors for inordinate amounts of time. Over 22 songs, they dip their toes into synth pop, soul, gospel, electronica, neo-country, sadboi ballads and there's even a hint of dancehall in there, too.
It's also yet another showcase for frontman Matty Healy as a lyricist. He's one of the most interesting songwriters around at the moment and he holds nothing back here.
Here, we take a look at some of the most memorable lines from the album.
‘My generation wanna fuck Barack Obama’, from ‘People’
An oblique reference to Fleabag? Who knows? But it certainly speaks to millions of lustful millennials, particularly at a time when our current leaders lack, among many things, the grace, poise and sex appeal of Obama. He may not have been perfect, but he’s certainly hotter than Boris and Trump.
‘Go outside? Seems unlikely’ and ‘I don’t like going outside so bring me everything here’, from ‘Frail State Of Mind' and ‘People’
Healy couldn't have known when he wrote this song (which was penned before November 2018, according to a tweet of his from that time) that the coronavirus was going to turn our lives upside down. Yet “Frail State Of Mind” in particular speaks to the current moment in rather deep ways. It's about being too anxious to go and interact with other people and right now it feels like a coronaphobia anthem.
‘I took shit for being quiet during the election and maybe that’s fair but I’m a busy guy!’, from ‘Roadkill’
Artists are expected to pick a side politically nowadays (remember all the hassle Taylor Swift got for keeping mum during the 2016 presidential election?) and it did not sit well with some that Healy and co did not get behind Labour in the 2019 general election – though the band’s Twitter account did tweet out, “Don’t vote Tory,” on election day at 5pm. So it’s interesting to see him come back here with little more than a shrug. He's a busy guy!
‘I’d like to meet myself and swap clothes’, from ‘I Think There’s Something You Should Know’
Healy has gotten into Kanye levels of self-mythologising in recent years and this feels like a very Kanye lyric – but only if you read it as a flex. As the rest of the song talks about various forms of anxiety, it would suggests there’s more going on here. Is he being purposefully confounding? Or is he suggesting that our constant desire to change ourselves is futile? Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
© Lorne Thomson
‘We went to Winter Wonderland and it was shit but we were happy’, from ‘Me And You Together Song’
Have you ever been to Winter Wonderland? Every November – though probably not this year, mind – a sprawling mass of kitsch Christmas tropes and fairground rides get lumped in London’s Hyde Park. It is, and we can’t emphasise this enough, the worst. Overpacked and overpriced, the spirit of Christmas pulverised into a sinewy bilge. So for him to have had fun at Winter Wonderland with this girl… boy, she must have been the one.
‘I never fucked in a car. I was lying. I do it on my bed lying down not trying’, from ‘Nothing Revealed/Nothing Denied’
He really just walked back his line in Brief Inquiry anthem “Love It If We Made It”, in which he yelled: “Fucking in a car, shooting heroin, saying controversial things just for the hell of it.” It's a self-own of epic proportions and we have to tip our hat to him.
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