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[tayfabe75]

"Obviously, it's Taylor Swift, so everyone was saying hello. She was just stood behind me, she was talking to Beabadoobee. I mean, I haven't seen Taylor in years, so it was actually a really nice room. But it, unfortunately, wasn't the time for me to pitch my post-rock Joni Mitchell project. She'll do it. She'll do it, she's smarter than both of us, mate, she knows what she's up to."

February 19, 2020: Matty explains that it wasn't the right time to pitch his album idea to Taylor at the NME Awards. (source)

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February 12, 2020: Producer Jon Gilmore catches Matty on film as he approaches Taylor for a hug at the NME Awards. (source)

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February 12, 2020: The 1975 perform 'I Like America & America Likes Me' at the NME Awards. (source)

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February 12, 2020: Matty poses for the cameras as The 1975 perform 'I Like America & America Likes Me' at the NME Awards. (source)

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This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while in regards to woman, the song, and what I’m about to say might sound crazy but I’m not trying to say that Matty and Taylor think they are these people but maybe they feel it can relate to their story. Ok, so I know you know about Eileen in the I’m in love with you music video and how the woman in the I’m in love with you music video might be Eileen, but Matty once said in an interview about that song that it was about meeting a prostitute in Northern Ireland when he was fifteen, and the self proclaimed ‘king of MySpace’. This is where the crazy part comes in. In history who else is a woman who came from a wealthy family, who financially supported a man that was spreading truth about religion and also had a far deeper relationship with this man than anyone admits and history just rewrites it because they don’t like it? By now I think you know I’m talking about Mary Magdalene and Jesus, and I’m not saying that Matty and Taylor are them I’m saying maybe they have been using their story or motifs in this big story they have been telling. Firstly, taylor’s song on debut Mary’s song is about her seeing her two old neighbors grow old together but still feel young with their partner, and ‘look at each other like the stars that shine’ and hoping she can one day have that, but when you look up Mary’s song, it is a hymn and part of the religion of Mary Magdalene, also this is the first place the my my my’s start, which continue into lover and death by a thousand cuts which are both very Matty adjacent songs. Secondly, Jamie getting sent their songs by somebody on MySpace, and then ending up signing Matty and making their record label together is very weird; but recently the fact that Jamie went with Matty to the Philadelphia shows where he was with Taylor’s dad which I was confused why he would go with Matty to hangout with Taylor’s dad but maybe they all know each other who knows. Thirdly, Matty and Taylor have been doing Jesus like poses for a while, specifically in the live performance of looking for somebody to love where Matty is carried off while doing the pose of Jesus on the cross. Taylor has done the jesus pose in the look what you made me do video when she spreads her arms and throws all her past selves down while standing in front of a neon glowing capital T. To further show the point, in the I’m in love with you music video Matty is dead in a tunnel when the music video starts and as soon as the music starts he is essentially resurrected from the dead, and the first person he tries to find is the same girl from the a change of heart music video; Eileen, Mary, Taylor? I only mention this because a significant part of Jesus’ resurrection story is that he first goes to Mary because she is the person he had the deepest relationship with, and many believe they were in love. History has of course rewritten this so that she was just another follower of Jesus but the truth is much deeper. Maybe they are using these motifs to signify to people that Jesus and Mary’s story is true to them in many more ways than one, specifically that both had somebody very close to them who helped them through everything but has been covered up by both fanbases and the media because people don’t want to accept that maybe people are better when they work together towards a common goal. And of course, now with the tortured poets department she has basically drilled it in that this relationship is religious to her, and she is ready to be ‘crucified’ for it. I think both her and him are going to reclaim their reputations, and resurrect figuratively once reputation tv comes out. I only say this because the next album for the 1975 is going to be their sixth album, and Taylor’s sixth album was reputation, which famously she was extremely ‘cancelled’ right before it came out. This is all just speculation, and there is more in the lyrics, but I wanted to put it out there because I thought all the synchronicity was cool, and I’m not saying either of them is playing a certain part.

Yes, yes - keep these Tatty dissertations coming! I really appreciate these because it gives me a chance to make connections that don't really make good one-off posts. Because my response will be both long and controversial, I'll go ahead and stuff it under a cut!

Before I even realized Eileen was written on the wall in the 'I'm In Love With You' music video, the song was put on my radar since it was included in Matty's acoustic solo setlist in Dublin, which happened shortly after the breakup announcement, aka "A Musical Performance of an Intimate Moment".

As he describes the story the inspired the song, he asks:

"Could it, should it, would it, did it?"

This expression would make any Taylor fan immediately think of her song 'Would've, Could've, Should've' - a song that is widely interpreted as being about grooming. Fans often connect WCS to an earlier Taylor song called 'Dear John' - now, a "Dear John letter" is a break-up letter, but could this possibly be wordplay of some kind? Because "John" is also slang for "a prostitute's client"!

'Woman' is a song you'd figure we wouldn't even have to discuss in relation to the pair, yet… Matty recently comparing the music industry to "thieves and pimps"… makes you wonder whether the prostitution referenced in 'Woman' at least doubles as a metaphor.

Given the sequential nature of The 1975's videos and how there's a rough narrative starting from Robbers to A Change of Heart to Somebody Else to Sincerity is Scary (music video partly inspired by the dance number in 'My Sister Eileen') to I'm In Love With You… the way the name "Eileen" is emphasized in the latter definitely left me wondering why they chose to reference that song, in particular.

Going back to 'Would've, Could've, Should've', the song is just packed with religious imagery. I might have said this before, but honestly, the first time I heard it, I didn't even get any "grooming" vibes from it, it sounded like straight-up religious trauma to me! Speaking of stained-glass windows, we see them during Taylor's performance of 'But Daddy I Love Him' at the Eras tour:

I did not know Mary's Song was the name of a hymn! How fascinating! Speaking of Matty-adjacent "my my mys"… Happiness! One of the several song titles the pair share in common, and a song that borrows lyrics from 'cowboy like me'! I digress…

I'm glad you mention Jamie! It was odd to me too that he attended so many Eras shows with Matty. I believe he recently went to a show last month with his daughter (of "Hi Kitty" fame). Can we also talk about how he received complimentary tickets to the Red Tour in January 2014? Now we have Jack signing with Jamie to Dirty Hit, becoming labelmates with Matty and The 1975. You have an article that was published on Matty's birthday this year, with Jamie dropping some advice to "gamble on yourself", which at least echoes Taylor's sentiment from her Time Person of the Year article a few months prior: "I did what I tend to do more and more often these days, which is to bet on myself".

Whew! But back to the religious imagery. 'I'm In Love With You' isn't the only case of resurrection, now is it?

Someone brings Taylor back to life in 'High Infidelity' (perhaps after her heart won't beat anymore in 'You're Losing Me'?) And of course, who can forget this iconic return:

And speaking of 'You're Losing Me', how about "getting tired even for a phoenix, always risin' from the ashes"… let's compare that with this strange comment from Matty on November 27th, 2023:

"This is the final part of the show - the resurrection, ladies and gentlemen. The phoenix from the flames."

Anon, I will admit that I am not a Christian. I have had lifelong qualms with organized religion, but I like Jesus and find him fascinating. Most of what I have to offer is from a more "pagan" perspective.

Now, in case you didn't know, the story of Jesus and his resurrection is actually a common celestial allegory about the winter solstice, very closely connected with themes of resurrection and rebirth, because it's all about the transition from winter (dormancy and death) to spring (renewal and rebirth). The sun "dies" (stops moving) on "the cross" (Crux constellation), and remains still for three days. On Christmas day, the sun "resurrects" or begins to move again. Jesus is also very closely tied to the planet Venus (the morning star or shepherd's star), as it was believed to help usher in the spring - just like the god Venus (Aphrodite), who can be seen in the Karma video, played by Ice Spice!

If you didn't know, Venus is the mother of Cupid! Cupid, an "archer" character that has been around since Taylor's Lover days...

I'll touch on this briefly, but do you happen to know of any other demonized women heavily associated with snakes? That's right! Eve (of Genesis fame). It's interesting that the snake's "metamorphosis" here changes it into butterflies, the symbol of Cupid's lover, Psyche.

Cupid seemingly makes a reappearance in Taylor's Midnights videos, at least thematically, here we see Taylor shot with an arrow, just like Psyche was from Cupid's bow:

I discussed this more at length in this post, but, long story short, Cupid and Psyche are secret lovers, carrying out their relationship in literal darkness. At least until Psyche shines a light on Cupid, burning him and scaring him away (May 2023 anyone?) But Psyche sets out to find her lost lover, escorted across the river Styx by Charon...

Then traverses the underworld (in what might be a ram's horn or Aries mask, no less)...

Completing a series of trials to win him back (and she succeeds!)

Coincidentally, Cupid/Psyche themes have popped up in The 1975's Lover-esque tour posters...

Keep in mind that Venus, Cupid, and Psyche are all gods! So, they still fit within a greater religious theme. Further, all of these gods, including Jesus, are interpretations of celestial bodies and their movements within the heavens, and I can hardly think of anything more romantic than likening your love to all of these religious and celestial figures that have inspired and enamored humans all throughout history.

Speaking of the heavens... Jesus also seems to be closely associated with astrological symbology! Particularly the symbol Pisces. For what it's worth, we see the Pisces constellation on the cover of the 'Mastermind' album in 'Lavender Haze', and there are fish (the symbol of Pisces) swimming in the heavens at the end of the video:

I remember reading some criticism that Taylor was trivializing the concept of 'Karma' with her song of the same name. However, I would argue that "Karma" has not been fully realized, because the "reincarnation" has not happened yet.

"The world moves on, another day, another drama. But not for me, all I think about is Karma"

Something incendiary awaits us in the Rep vault that will set fire to the dollhouse Taylor has helped construct as a facade.

"Karma is a fire in your house and she 'boutta pop up unannounced"

And speaking of Reputation, that prologue sure is a great read! Especially this part:

"We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us."

A line so important, Taylor chose to bookend the Reputation prologue with this quote by using it twice - once to open the prologue, and a second time to close it. I'm not sure any of this helps, anon, but I see all the same threads that you do.

As for Mary Magdalene, though I am not as familiar with her story as I perhaps should be, but what I can tell you is that she's not the only controversial wife edited out of the bible! God's wife, Asherah, got the same treatment (and her symbol, the tree, was likewise demonized in Genesis alongside Eve). Per her wiki page:

"The Hebrew Bible frequently and graphically associates goddess worship with prostitution"

What does it all mean? Your guess is as good as mine! But the fact that Taylor seems to be invoking this ancient, divinely feminine symbology really excites me! Thanks so much for the ask! 🤍

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"What about Happiness? Like, happiness is overrated. Happiness is like, we have fleeting moments of joy, right? We're not going to get happiness because it's not a destination, it's like there's this… and the thing that pisses me off about like, everyone saying that we should be happy all the time, it's like, what about when you're not? Are you being wrong? Are you wrong as a human? I always feel like, 'Oh, I'm not happy, I must be doing something wrong.' No, you're not, you're just going through the human experience. And happiness is overrated. Like, give me purpose over happiness. You know, music and art, all this is fucking… it's great and it gives us stuff, but it's not like, important in the way that like, people who at the turn of the century were working on radioactive material. They chose to do that, and they were poisoning themselves and they knew it. Were they doing it for happiness? No, they weren't. They were doing it for purpose because sometimes it's just bigger than happiness. I don't really care that much about happiness. I care about… for me, anyway, because I don't really know what it is, it's like… I'm happiest when I'm doing something that I know is good. That's happiness for me."

February 18, 2019: Matty talks about happiness and what it means to him. (source)

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"The most rage-provoking element of being a female is the gaslighting that happens when, you know, for centuries, we've been just expected to just absorb male behavior silently. Right? Silent absorption of whatever any guy decides to do. And oftentimes when we, in our enlightened state, in our emboldened state now, respond to bad male behavior, or somebody just doing something that was absolutely out of line and we respond, that response is treated like the offense, itself. You know, there's been situations with… recently with somebody who's very guilty of this in my life, and it's a person who makes me feel or tries to make me feel like I'm the offender by having any kind of defense to his offenses. It's like, 'Oh I have absolutely no right to respond or I'm crazy. I have no right to respond or I'm angry. I have no right to respond or I'm out of line.' So, you providing the musical bed for me to make that point that I've been trying so hard to figure out how do I say that… how do I say why this feels so bad?"

November 25, 2020: Taylor talks about using the song 'Mad Woman' to express female rage. (source)

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"End of era. I can't make retrospective statements. It's why I've been filming this documentary for 12 years. Every single time a statement ends, the idea to follow that with a retrospective statement, something that looks back, something that is celebratory of a previous thing, blargh, it makes me wanna crawl out of my skin, I hate it. I just wanna go forward. This is the only record where I do look back a little bit. I mean, I think the only time I specifically do it is in 'Guys'. 'The moment that we started a band, was the best thing that ever happened'. It's quite sad. It was also one for the homies, you know. I wanted to write a love song for friends. People don't have that very much. I love that idea. And even if it was the fact that going through the DNA of who we were, to make this record, there's so much reference to old emo core, or house music that we were growing up with. It feels like we went right back. We went and found all the old photos, you know, of where we came from, is almost how it felt to make this record. When I made this record, I was like, '[beep], this is the last 1975 record, for ages'. Not the last 1975 record, but this is definitely us stopping making music for a bit. There's essentially been lots of different album out, for this record. We live in a world of, you know, iTunes uploads six months before the record comes out. Someone's like, 'we needed a piece of artwork,' and I keep going, 'Okay, 'I'll give you our piece of artwork'. The artwork changed every week. The artwork now is basically the most minimal version, example, of what we've had, and it's all been based on texture, and the concept of wabi-sabi. The record's been about deconstruction. The record feels like it should be just in a paper bag. I wanted to steal The Durutti Column idea. The Durutti Column, one of my favorite bands of all time, they made one record, the vinyl cover was sandpaper, so it destroyed any record that it was next to. I mean, oh my God, how [beep] badass is that shit? That is so my vibe. I wish that I had of done it, but the thing is I love that idea so much that I couldn't have passed it off as my own. I grew up in punk and hardcore. The most punk person that I have ever met in my life is Greta Thunberg. She gave me a sense of hope, do you know what I mean? We're all kind of wallowing in nihilism, and what's the point? And when you meet her, she don't give you a pat on the back, I'll tell you that much, but she [beep] means what she's talking about. We were talking about the Sega Mega Drive startup sound of The 1975, and we were talking about how that happens every time, and we were like, 'What is the most modern version of that?' And then the conversation became, 'Well, what is the most modern thing? What is the most modern statement?' And it was Greta Thunberg, we realized, we get Greta Thunberg to sing it. 'We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people'. That idea was obviously exciting, immediately. Using that platform is a great thing to do, and it's also creatively exciting. The moment she's deemed, she's one of the most important figures of our generation, but I really like the idea of formally encapsulating that in a piece of music that therefore exists in pop culture, in the way that music does, and goes on a record. You know, no one's gonna find a tweet about Greta Thunberg in the rubble, in a thousand years, do you know what I mean? But if in a thousand years they found that record, that would move somebody in a thousand years, who finds that in the rubble."

May 22, 2020: Matty explains The 1975's Notes on a Conditional Form album. (source)

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"I don't think I've ever leaned into the old version of myself more creatively than I have on this album, where it's very, very autobiographical. But also moments of extreme catchiness and moments of extreme personal confession. It's definitely a quirky record. With this album, I felt like I sort of gave myself permission to revisit older themes that I used to write about, maybe look at them with fresh eyes. And to revisit older instruments — older in terms of when I used to use them. Because when I was making 1989, I was so obsessed with it being this concept of Eighties big pop, whether it was Eighties in its production or Eighties in its nature, just having these big choruses — being unapologetically big. And then Reputation, there was a reason why I had it all in lowercase. I felt like it wasn't unapologetically commercial. It's weird, because that is the album that took the most amount of explanation, and yet it's the one I didn't talk about. In the Reputation secret sessions I kind of had to explain to my fans, 'I know we're doing a new thing here that I'd never done before.' I'd never played with characters before. For a lot of pop stars, that's a really fun trick, where they're like, 'This is my alter ego.' I had never played with that before. It's really fun. And it was just so fun to play with on tour — the darkness and the bombast and the bitterness and the love and the ups and the downs of an emotional-turmoil record."

September 18, 2019: Taylor talks about revisiting older themes on her album 'Lover'. (source)

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April 10, 2023: As 'About You' ends, Matty points to the camera and mouths, "You know who you are" at The 1975's show at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre in Adelaide, Australia. (source)

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"Do you think I have forgotten about you?"' is as simple and compelling of a Healy chorus as possible. It all works. Yet if you step back, you realize this is just a nosier take on Taylor Swift's "Mirrorball", also produced by Antonoff.

October 10, 2022: Spin compares 'About You' to 'Mirrorball' in a music review. (source)

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This bridge ends up being sung by Carly Holt, your bandmate Adam Hann’s wife. How did that come to be? I think the whimsy and the naïveté in that song come from the fact that it was going to be a Drive Like I Do song. I wasn't thinking about the profundity of it, or I wasn't thinking about fitting it into a record. I was just thinking about it being quite pure and blissful. Just practically, what happened was that I didn't like that bridge. I wrote a bunch of different bridges. Michelle from Japanese Breakfast had sung on 'Part of the Band', and I remembered that moment of — I've done it a few times, but sometimes one of the revelations is, Maybe it's just the voice; it's not the part. So when Carly sang it, it was like, Okay, yeah, the part's great — just I shouldn't have been singing that. What we didn't want to do is have a feature. We hadn't really done a feature before in a 1975 album because I think that would take — well, Phoebe pops up on one of our records, but me and Phoebe kind of orbit each other: She's in our music video; I turn up and I open up for her shows. So that felt real. What wouldn’t feel real is if Bad Bunny turned up on track ten or something. We wanted to keep it in the family.

October 14, 2022: Matty shares some insight into The 1975's 'About You'. (source)

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"I think when we talk about pop, we talk about the kind of music that we associate that kind of like, freedom of, that is normally kind of delivered to the masses. So, your modern day you know, your Katy Perrys, your Taylor Swifts, your Biebers kind of thing like that, and I think we do sit in that world, we just seem to kind of juxtapose it a little bit. We just kind of… or, we're aware of it. And we tald about being in that world and how ridiculous it is."

May 18, 2017: Matty namedrops Taylor while talking about pop music. (source)

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"Well, you could just cross out 975 and just... you'd have The 1." "I like your style."

May 30, 2014: An interviewer suggests a modification to The 1975. (source)

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"This song, I wrote it right after my one epic teenage tantrum that I ever threw in my whole life and I remember screaming something like, 'But daddy I love him!' and running out and storming into my room and slamming the door and then I sat down on the floor and wrote this song."

May 19, 2010: Taylor describes a temper tantrum over that inspired 'Love Story' (source)

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Visual similarities between The 1975's 'A Change of Heart' music video and Taylor Swift's 'Lavender Haze' music video. (source 1, 2)

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October 11, 2023: A Peter Pan-esque figure can be seen sitting in the clouds during Taylor's performance of Lavender Haze at the Eras Tour. (source 1, 2, 3)