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[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

Anxiety Music 

A LOT can be said about the honesty and relatability of The 1975′s music that has contributed to the cultivation of such a close knit community of fans, but for the sake of time and deadlines I want to point out this one last cool thing. When I was drafting blog posts unrelated to the theory part of this project, I thought about calling a post “Anxiety Music,” and then I forgot about it and was going to make a post about these sick little “behind the music” features on Spotify, and then I came across this one in which Matty uses the same title I was thinking about! Maybe I had seen this a long time ago and it was buried in my subconscious, but I took it as a sign to point this out nonetheless. 

In lieu of honest writing and truth-telling, Matty Healy hasn’t shied away from being vulnerable in his songwriting. An entire subgenre exists within their discography--anxiety music in which the band perfectly captures, in various styles, what it feels like to be anxious and young and on the internet. 

“Frail State of Mind”

“Give Yourself a Try”

“If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”

“A Change of Heart”

“TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME”

“The Man Who Married a Robot / Love Theme”

“Sincerity is Scary” 

and more!

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

Life on the road w/the 1975

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some photos that capture the essence of the fanbase 

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

Escapism and In-Your-Face-ism

I’m past the theoretical serious part of the project so I thought I would share this very serious note I made weeks ago to myself: 

Some songs are just bloop bloop cinematic and very distracting

What I think I was getting at by this statement is that The 1975 make music for jumping around in your room to, but they also make music with serious political statements that has contributed to meaningful conversations in and around their fanbase. From the escapist point of view, we can look at songs like “The Sound,” “Chocolate,” and plenty more, but the second half of their discography--A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships and Notes On a Conditional Form--have included politically charged anthems such as “I Like America and America Likes Me” and “Love it if We Made it.” The red photo above is a lyric from the “I Like America and America Likes Me” video, which focuses on the experience of young people in modern America, the one in which almost all of us have experienced an active shooter situation on our school campuses. As discussed in earlier posts, The 1975 grew up with us and they grew up with the internet. It seems that as their core fanbase approaches the age at which they can partake in political events and movements, The 1975 joined us, or rather, they provide the soundtrack to our anger, frustration, and motivation for making a difference. I can’t prove this, and a band whose members are all around 32 now should probably have made statements like these sooner. You might even call it performative activism, and I’m not sure I would argue with you. That said, songs like these have impacted the exchange of knowledge within The 1975′s online and in-person community. 

Greta Thunberg recorded the first song on the band’s latest album, NOACF, and before the pandemic stopped touring, they started selling sustainably sourced merchandise at shows. Performative or not, this is a positive change, especially in an industry that produces so much waste. 

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

Larger Than Life

During album and tour promo times they're always doing something online, always posting things so that keeps people interested and excited. It's definitely a cliche but they do seem to be larger than life at times - Sierra 

The 1975 has played some of the biggest venues and events in the UK (the O2, Reading and Leeds, Glastonbury, etc) but their sweet spot in the US is the iconic amphitheater. They have played Red Rocks (and NOT played Red Rocks, more on that in another post) and other iconic but smaller venues here, and didn’t play Madison Square Garden until their most recent tour. But online, they are massive in every country. On tour, there are Twitter accounts dedicated solely to reselling tickets to their shows and there is an integral component of telling people where line queues start and end, when they are cutting them off, and any information necessary for following the tour. These online conversations shape every minute of the live experience of camping out for the band. The 1975 takes up so much digital space in a way that literally makes them larger than life.

On a different note, one that is contradictory to the above point, is that no one is doing live performance like these guys. The graphics, the moving boxes, the dancers, seeing The 1975 live is unreal, even for those who don’t necessarily enjoy their music. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the band has such a massive online presence...the in-person experience is dreamlike. 

The fact that there's more than one account doing that is insane, in an amazing way. For a band that plays ampitheaters instead of arenas (aside from LA/NY/Chicago), the social media resale market is insane - Sarah

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

Ken Macrorie - The Poison Fish / Jia Tolentino - Always Be Optimizing

Matty Healy is afraid of being a cliche, yet the band also capitalizes on their cliche features. Macrorie writes about Engfish--the tired, boring academic language we use because we think it’s what we are supposed to do. I argue that Engfish, in the context of the internet and monoliths online, is a trap for artists and members of collaborative communities alike. Digitized Engish is manifested as saying certain songs are your favorite because you’ll seem cool, or when an artist starts writing music based on the public’s expectations of them rather than what they want to write. This way of communicating is vacuous (I just used Engfish!). It’s a fake way of being that does not result in the meaningful connections that are possible in online communities. 

What Macrorie seeks is truth and writing that is alive. 

[The 1975] has changed their sounds all throughout their four albums and it leaves people wondering what they'll do next or what the next album will sound like so they keep the excitement going. - Sierra

 [Matty] is so aware of what people love and hate about him and the band and he goes out of his way to leave clues and references in his music and videos that let us know that he knows... To many of us, he was a myth and legend that we could talk to and who would talk back to us. Plus, as he matured and continued to make music, he and the band just continued to perfectly capture the essence of what it meant to be a young person on the internet, a young person on Tumblr specifically in the beginning. - Zach

I know it sounds corny, but my experiences with this band have taught me to live life to its fullest, and that there are so many experiences to be had. - Sarah

They share snippets of their lives with their fans & have interactions with their fans. You feel close but really aren’t ... but that feeling of them sharing an extra bit of themselves to you extends out as caring for you the fan. That really drew me in. - Kim 

The 1975 had a very subdued, understated tone that meshed well with the confused and aimless feeling of many teens and young adults in 2013. - Bella

Truthfully their music has helped me get through a lot of hard times in my life like breakups, depression, hard times. I will never forget the feeling of being in high school and driving around with my best friend blasting Robbers and feeling like I was on top of the world. - Brooke

That sounds pretty honest to me.

On a similar note, Jia Tolentino’s essay is concerned with the suffocating atmosphere of online optimization. On platforms like Instagram, everyone is picture-perfect and always becoming somehow *more* perfect, so there’s this competition to see who is the happiest, the fittest, having the most fun--and it’s an exhausting and inauthentic way of utilizing the internet. 

Rather than waiting for history to decide where lines are drawn and when they become one thing or the other, The 1975 does it themselves. Each new album marks a distinct era for the band. In this way, The 1975 is always “optimizing,” but it’s an optimization that occurs of their own volition rather than the internet’s. While the band is cognizant of the fans and has consistently made an effort to interact and engage, the eras are wholly developed by the band. Of course, they draw inspiration from the state of the world, the fans, and more, but still, The 1975 does not seek to please anyone, they just make the music they want to make. There is no sense of selling-out, which Matty has said he fears, only a truly remarkable eye for aesthetics and graphics.

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

oh, I think my boyfriend’s a nihilist...

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

David Bartholomae - Inventing the University

Bartholomae explains that every time a student sits down to write they have to “invent a university” for themselves in that specific setting. What kind of writing am I supposed to be doing? What kind of writing does this specific professor like? Should I be using academic or casual language? Is there a difference?? 

I think there is no need to create oneself (or a university) in digital communities like Tumblr and sometimes Twitter because those spaces are conducive to implicit self-creation and re-creation and un-creation and extra-creation. Despite the fact that a large component of tumblr and twitter involves writing, you don’t have to adhere to a specific style or tone each time you log on. Of course, there are always exceptions and reservations to this, like when I get a lot of likes on a Tweet, I’ll probably (albeit subconsciously) Tweet in that same vein or with the same tone a couple more consecutive times. Even without the pressure to be likable or conform to a certain ~flavor~ of composition online, we sometimes still do.  

The core principle of the 1975 is not having a genre or rather rules - Matty

Digital platforms and The 1975 are constantly evolving, so fans get to do the same. There’s no code or script to follow--you do your thing and I do mine. Writing on the internet is in direct conflict with university writing in that it’s all all chaos all the time here, and the same goes for The 1975. Their edges are jagged, which how they have managed to wedge themselves so perfectly between their fans and the digital world in every era.  

I started listening to The 1975 my freshman year of college and I spent all of high school trying to fit in and be like everyone else. When I first saw The 1975 they were different from any other band I'd ever listened to and they were cool. With their fans it was the same thing. Everyone was so different and they were all just themselves and not trying to fit in or be cool. It made me not afraid to be myself and I feel like once I started listening to them and being more involved I could be whoever I wanted to be not who I thought other people wanted me to be - Sierra

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

And irony's okay, I suppose culture is to blame you try and mask your pain in the most postmodern way

Sincerity is Scary

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It turns out that if you're trying to write an honest record about relationships and how they're mediated in the modern day, you're kind of writing a record about the internet by proxy - Matty 

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

What about The 1975 is so intoxicating? How have they cultivated such a devout fanbase?

First, Matty Healy and his hair. Are you kidding me? As I said, I love how the 1975’s music celebrates the whole human existence- the euphoric, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the scary. - Christina 

I think one reason why they've become a big part of my life is because they're a big part in other people's lives. It's essentially joining a community where everybody feeds into each other. - Sarah (collab communities!!!)

People were ordering pizza and sharing it with others in line, everyone was playing their music out loud, and before the doors even opened, a wall of screaming teenage girls rushed to the door in an attempt to be the first ones in. I remember taking off running after everyone else, not even knowing why I was running. - Kaelin

Social media is a game changer for those artists/bands who  want to engage and interact with their fan base. And that is exactly what The 1975 have seemed to do over the past five years...So social media has made me feel closer to the band than any other band I’ve followed in the past. - Kim

Their songs are all just as dramatic and melancholic in subject matter as our Tumblr posts and late night tweets but just like our emotional outlet was so often thinly veiled behind irony or sarcasm, so too were their songs’ subject matter behind the major key. - Zach

I think for many people it's exciting to feel like they're a part of something bigger than themselves...I think another thing that makes The 1975 so intoxicating is that their music sounds nostalgic for a lot of people. It's hard to describe but when you first hear a song you don't have a specific memory attached to it but with the 1975 you get that feeling immediately. - Sierra (collab communities!!!)

also, americans like british people. - Bella 

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

Kenneth Bruffee - Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind

Bruffee discusses the value of collaborative versus individual learning. I don’t know about you, but being left to my own devices never bodes well. For example, I am writing this post as the deadline for my (unwritten) independent study Peace Studies thesis looms over my head like the Grim Reaper (it’s due tomorrow). But in collaborative learning environments, in which everybody can contribute and share their thoughts, I find myself more comfortable and learning more than I ever would have studying on my own. After all, the words of others are always better than one’s own.

The entire persona, lifeforce, enigma of The 1975 relies on collaborative communities. Without the advent of tumblr from 2012 on, The 1975 probably would never have moved past performing in shitty bars in Manchester. Long before the band knew that their area of experience would be the internet, the internet knew. More specifically, young people on the internet knew. 

When the self-titled album was released in 2013, Fans took to tumblr, we<3it, pinterest, and more to post photos of their favorite lyrics drawn in their notebooks, ridiculous edits, and fanfictions. Oh, fanfictions. Those were simpler (weirder) times. 

But British boybands were in on tumblr. Arctic Monkeys, One Direction, The Vamps, etc. were plastered all over music kids’ dashboards. But no one adapted to the digital spaces in which these groups were immortalized and idolized quite in quite like The 1975. They responded to this fame and used to their advantage. Call me naive, but I don’t mean that they capitalized on their internet fame, The 1975 utilized digital channels to connect to listeners, to show them that this new, shiny culture of the online world is beautiful and epistemic. When Matty speaks directly to millenials because he sees value in their communities, which is refreshing, considering the fact that most adults scoff at the rise in popularity of online communities. And that’s the beauty of collaborative communities: fans create The 1975 as they create themselves, and vice versa. We grew up in tandem. Longtime fan of The 1975 and avid tumblr user Zach captures the essence of the times pretty perfectly:

It seemed like they were on the exact same wavelength as all of Tumblr--their finger on the pulse of the heartache and melodrama of teenagers around the world. Every song off of their first album was made into every kind of fan art that you can imagine. They had managed to perfectly capture all of the angst and longing and crude natured self-awareness that marked young people in 2013. The glitzy guitars and greatly-sing-along-able-but-barely-intelligible vocals gave the band an upbeat, energetic sound that so starkly contrasted the lyrics about sex and drugs and romance and heartbreak and awkward dates and bank robberies and all of the other things that us romantic-hearted Tumblr kids dreamt about. But The 1975, uniquely, was keenly aware of their popularity on the platform and interacted freely and often with the fans in the fandom.

In another, larger sense, the internet is a limitless collaborative community. We are equipped with interpretive tools like Genius, various social media platforms, and Spotify that allow us to openly discuss our understanding of a band’s songs, lyrics, fashion sense, and more. Through nights spent studying lyrics more meticulously than vocabulary for an exam, knowledge is created. It’s emotional intelligence, poetic justice, idealistic overanalysis. And it’s all worthwhile. 

Fast forward 7 years: the world is in lockdown and all we have left is the internet to keep us sane (or further unravel the spool of our sanity). To combat such monotonous and grief-stricken times, The 1975 dropped a link to the mysteriously titled “MINDSHOWER,” a break from the internet, facilitated on the internet. 

Follow the link below to poke your head into the virtual lobby of what appears to be a wellness center. Navigate over to the coffee table and you can view lookbooks and concept art from various artists and photographers who have worked with The 1975. You can also download templates to create your very own t-shirt and poster designs for the band’s latest album, Notes On a Conditional Form. As tumblr and twitter and now the Mindshower suggest, the internet is an infinite collaborative community that has made way for numerous sub-communities to spring up. It’s overwhelming, but it makes space for everyone, regardless of talent, interest, need, etc. 

MINDSHOWER https://www.mindshower.ai/

Bruffee claims that concepts are better learned in groups than they are individually. He examines conversation vs reflective thought. Where conversation is social interaction, reflective thought is internalized conversation. In a way, the internet allows users to seamlessly transition from conversation to reflective thought. Behind the veil of digital anonymity, a person can post their deepest, darkest secrets and engage in meaningful discourse about it. In this way, with this level of simultaneous anonymity and knowingness, our personal thoughts and conversation are conflated--it’s this weird hybrid of inner thoughts and public discourse. 

I have attached the video for “Give Yourself a Try” because it was the first single from The 1975′s internet-themed album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships and lyrics such as “when your vinyl and your coffee collection is a sign of the times” and “a millenial the babyboomers like” demonstrate Matty’s responses to the digitized world, and the alarming rate at which we seem to get old in this era. Honesty and self-reflection is one of the many (many) we participate in online communities, and to hear it on a chart-topping record is validating (and exciting!). 

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

Excavation of an Enigma

Matty Healy is sort of the king of the digital turn. 

The 1975 owes much of their success to Tumblr. While the band formed in 2002, they did not gain any semblance of fame until the release of their first full-length album in 2013, and it was largely due to the fact that Tumblr was one of the most popular social media sites at the time. 

Tumblr in the 2010s was the digital Wild West. A vast, undefinable, and anonymous space in which anyone could be anyone--or unapologetically themselves in a way they couldn’t in real life. And tumblr was a hotspot for music discovery. In the words of some avid tumblr users in the 2010s...

Tumblr really influenced my music taste, if I saw someone reblogging any bands on my dash, I would try them out and listen to them. I think that is probably how I discovered The 1975. - Olivia 

I’ve had my tumblr for almost a decade now which feels crazy - I created it when I was 13 and quickly found a community of cool people who has the same music taste as me. - Grace

I also just feel like Tumblr especially has this whole culture of mashups or like "what the song would sound like from another room at a party" type things happening, which is fun and like lets you get into some special headspace with a song. -Gabs

I had a tumblr in middle and high school. I had 3 of them. One for funny memes, one for my one direction and 5SOS fandom and one for personal stuff. It would help me connect to my friends and meet other people around the world. - Brooke

Tumblr is how I discovered the vast majority of the bands and artists that shaped my formative teenage years because of how easy it is to share and listen to "audio posts" on the site - Kaelin

I think that it’s impossible to over emphasize how pivotal Tumblr and--to a lesser extent--Twitter were to my experience as a music listener...More than anything though, there just was a culture on Tumblr. - Zachary 

Tumblr in the 2010s was lawless; there was a fair mix of melodramatic poetry, aesthetically pleasing photos such as neon signs in the moonlight and fairy lights strewn across a tapestry-laden wall, and raw discourse with strangers about emotional trauma. The 1975 was a group of rugged, cigarette-smoking British twenty-somethings (now thirty somethings) and they were the textbook definition of what Tumblr considered cool. Matty, Ross, Adam, and George have mastered the art of living in a digitized world. As generations have become more closely tied to online spaces than ever before, so has The 1975′s music. Rather than scrutinize the digital age, The 1975 has embraced it and made the internet an integral part of the band’s culture. 

This blog is dedicated to The 1975, their fans, and anyone whose identity or thoughts or feelings or anything else has been validated by their music or Tumblr itself. 

In the following posts you will find commentary on the relationship between The 1975 and expressivism, discursive communities, optimization, and more. You will get to hear from fans as they discuss the ways in which their lives have been shaped by the band and the platform that grew up as we did. And of course, you’ll get to see some cool photos of this sick ass band and the even cooler people who follow them on tour. The 1975 has, through their own digitized journey, shaped the way we consume and understand music, and therefore, language. And as a person whose entire sense of self is rooted in the power of language, I think it is only right that we call The 1975′s influence on language for what it is: revolutionary. 

With that, 

Rock and roll is dead

God bless The 1975

[thewomanwhomarriedarobot]

Welcome. We’re all just the same, what a shame...