The Biggest Band In The World (That No One's Ever Heard Of)
From 150-capacity clubs to a sold-out Madison Square Garden, deconstructing The 1975's unusual climb to the top.
On June 1, 2017, the 1975 headlined a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden. Even though the Manchester four-piece were 3,000 miles from home, it matched their largest concert in the United Kingdom: London's O2 Arena, where the band did two consecutive shows in December 2016, holds 20,000. On stage that night, frontman Matthew "Matty" Healy encapsulated the 1975's unusual climb to the top before the deeply personal track, "Me":
"I don't want to be annoyingly humble, but when we started—12, 13 years ago—we never thought anything like this was ever going to be possible. Thank you so much. We're not a huge radio band, we're not a band that's all over every magazine or whatever, so that's proof we are a fan's band."
And he has an important point: One would expect for a Madison Square Garden headliner—a sold-out headliner, for that matter—to, at the very least, have had a song regularly spun on mainstream radio. However, the highest a track by the 1975 has ever reached on Billboard's Hot 100 Chart was No. 80, and that was back in February 2014, over three years prior to the show. In fact, when documenting their success in 2016, SPIN noted that "they might not even need a crossover hit to be one of the biggest bands in America."
Yet, fans began to line up—or camp out, rather—on 8th avenue in front of Madison Square Garden an incomprehensible seven-plus days before the show. Their goal was to secure a place in the front row, on the barrier of the general admission floor, closest to the stage. Those fans kept track of places in line, a system that showed itself in a YouTube video of Healy's speech, which sees hands in the front row covered with numbers written in black ink.
Massive success hit the 1975—composed of 20-somethings Healy, drummer George Daniel, guitarist Adam Hann, and bassist Ross MacDonald—in September 2013, when their self-titled debut appeared at the top of the UK Albums Chart upon release. Michael Hann of The Guardian captured the cultural uproar, both positive and negative, towards the band at that time, saying in a late 2013 article, "but it's not the 80s references that have put people's backs up so much as the fact that the 1975 have become so big so quickly." They began the year playing free shows in provincial bars and ended it as "perhaps, the biggest new band of the year," having supported the Rolling Stones and released a No. 1 album in less than six months.
In fact, the 1975's New York City venue size alone has increased almost 8000% in just four years.
But, how on Earth did they do it?
I. Touring
Touring is an important aspect of being any musician, but, for the 1975, it appears to be absolutely integral to their career. So much so that Songkick named them the "hardest working band of 2014," having played more shows and traveled more distances than any artist since 2010.
Here's a closer look at the four-piece's incessant tour schedule over the course of their five-year career. Each dot represents a concert played by the 1975 in the corresponding city.
"Please welcome my favorite band...the 1975." - Matty Healy, before "Love Me" at the 1975's sold-out O2 Arena show December 2016
"The most continuous time off I've had since December 2012 is five days. I consider a night off and a day off to be two days off. The other weekend we played a festival in Plymouth, then drove back through the night towards London for our day off. That starts when we get off the bus at six in the morning. I go back home, settle in, have a shower, cup of tea. Ah, back home! And then the silence is deafening. It's not like being home where you can go and see your mum for a couple of days, or go and do something. You know you can't really leave the flat because you need to be leaving the next morning. I can't have a walk up to Primrose Hill or get the lads round. It doesn't happen—it's just a day in between gigs." - Matty Healy to Michael Hann for The Guardian August 2014
"Every day is somewhere different and there are moments of true jet-lagged confusion: you wake up in the Swiss hotel in Tokyo and you think you're in Geneva because it says Swiss on the fittings. There are moments of falling asleep on your feet. You use things to punctuate your day: up at eight, do a radio show—then I know I can smoke a joint at 11. Six months ago I was always worrying about what was coming next, but now I realize worrying about things I don't have control over is pointless." - Matty Healy to Michael Hann for The Guardian August 2014
It was like, Healy says, being in a “really glamorous version of Dawn of the Dead. Instead of being followed by zombies, it was iPhone-clutching kids. - Michael Hann for The Guardian November 2015
He even confesses to having been a junkie. A junkie? An actual junkie? He retreats. "I wasn't a heroin addict—I never lost it to heroin—but I was a coke addict big-time. I was 18, I dabbled in everything. I wanted to be Jack Kerouac. I thought I was as decadent as all of that. I thought: the world will catch up. And that stems from this: I remember once, I was sat in front of the TV—I must have been about six—and my dad's mates are all welders. They were sat behind me watching a video of Michael Jackson. And they were expressing their opinions about how alien he was, how unrelatable he was. And I remember thinking to myself: 'Well, I'm a lot more like him than I am like you'." - Michael Hann for The Guardian October 2013
Healy found himself tumbling towards a crisis, which arrived on 6 December, onstage in Boston. “There was girl stuff,” he says. “There was family stuff. There was financial stuff. There was drug stuff. I remember hearing the crowd and having an identity crisis. I thought: ‘If you want to see a show, I’ll give you a f**king show. If you’ve come to see the jester drink himself into a slumber, I’ll give it to you.’ I felt like I’d become an idea as opposed to being a person.” ... At the show’s end, Healy fell to the stage and refused to leave. “George carried me off, cos I would have stayed there, apparently. I just wanted to sit there and do something you don’t. It was so blurry and of such a particular color: I remember everything as orangey yellow." - Michael Hann for The Guardian November 2015
From Australia and the United States to the iconic Royal Albert Hall and Japan, the 1975 played over 300 concerts in about two years. Almost inevitably, the whirlwind album cycle, the blur of fame and admiration from swarms of fans, reached a breaking point for Healy and his band. After a well-publicized on-stage breakdown in December 2014, 2015 appeared bleak for the newly-minted Manchester four-piece.
However, the 1975 were about to prove that their success was indeed evergreen. The first half of 2015 became a creative lull, allowing the members to regain their composure after two years of madness. In the end, it was the next album and its recording that eventually pulled them through to the other side.
II. I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It
Not only did the 1975's sophomore album, 2016's I Like It When You Sleep..., take No. 1 in the UK, but the record also debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 as well, selling 108,000 album units (98,000 of those being pure album sales). For comparison, it took 26 weeks for their debut to sell that much.
"The turning point was when we just forgot about all the bulls**t. We soon realized that the only album we wanted to make was an album that’s about conviction and about our truth.” - Matty Healy to Dan Stubbs for NME February 2016
Good news: He says they're number one in 37 countries. He also notes the album's songs take the top 11 chart spots in Jordan. "Jordan? Love it," says Daniel. - Patrick Doyle for Rolling Stone March 2016
“It's been defined by how polarising it is,” Healy continues. “I think that it's just a record that doesn't and doesn't need to adhere to any rules. We never had any preconceptions of what kind of record we wanted to make—we just made the music for the purity of it. My tagline is: 'We create in the way that we consume'.” - Laurence Day for The Line of Best Fit May 2016
“The generosity of it as a commercial aspect is one thing, but the record finished itself, man. There were too many songs I loved! People say 'save it for another album'. Another album? I wasn’t thinking about any other albums when I was making this one. I was thinking about this album. I was thinking about it making me happy." - Laurence Day for The Line of Best Fit May 2016
“I have been saying it’s the best record I have made to date." - Mike Crossey, legendary Arctic Monkeys and Kooks producer, to Andrew Unterberger for SPIN February 2016
"My life had changed and I couldn’t make another record about being a bored, middle-class teenager in Macclesfield, but I also didn’t want to get caught in the trap of making a record about ‘poor famous me’,” he says. “You know, ‘Oh God, Champagne tastes horrible; aren’t threesomes hard?’ So I went quite inward—it’s not about going partying, it’s an odyssey into my brain.” - Dan Stubbs for NME August 2016
III. Streaming
The 1975 have always done particularly well on streaming platforms. For example, in 2014, The Guardian published an article showing how that year’s Glastonbury lineup would change if it were decided by streaming numbers. Out of eight acts, the 1975 were fourth to perform on the main Pyramid Stage Sunday afternoon. However, if Spotify data determined the order, the 1975 would have played second, behind Ed Sheeran. While Chart statistics do integrate this kind of information, let's separate it out and look at streaming alone.
“We create in the way we consume” has become the 1975's tagline, representing the conglomeration of genres that have found their way into the band's 80-plus song catalogue. However, the jukebox-like nature of the 1975’s sound scared away major labels back in the day, who bit their tongues once fans latched onto the act’s shape-shifting attitude towards music. However, it makes sense: In an age where Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube make what feels like any and all music readily available, many music writers, and the 1975 themselves, have purported that the youthful generation listens to music on shuffle, flipping through genres with the light tap of a touch-screen button. A 2016 article by The Guardian captured the band's response to the labels' early concerns, stating:
"“That’s your problem, they told the industry in response: You don’t understand the way people listen to music these days."
IV. Aesthetic
With the 1975's new album came an entirely new look, and music videos have always been integral to constructing their image. In 2012, the band posted a music video for each of the four tracks on their first ever release as the 1975, Facedown, which cemented an austere black-and-white aesthetic that followed them through their debut album. However, the first single from this sophomore record—“Love Me,” with its accompanying rambunctious music video—was a clear separation from that more traditional indie aesthetic.
To get a feel for the 1975's changing image and associated music video popularity, the visual below tracks YouTube views over time. The band's official channels, where their music videos are posted, boast over a half billion views combined.
- Views
First, "Chocolate." Even with the second's album success, "Chocolate," from their debut, is still the 1975's most popular song, spending more time on the UK and US Charts than any other track. It first released on their original YouTube channel, but it was then moved over to their official VEVO channel, where all their music videos are currently posted, in August 2013.
After a serious of black-and-white-esque music videos from their debut, "Love Me," the first single from I Like It When You Sleep, was released in October 2015.
"The Sound," released February 2015, is a self-aware testament to the 1975's staunch and rejuvenated image.
Lastly, "Somebody Else," their most recent music video, released in July 2016.
V. Critical Recognition
It's becoming clearer where Healy was coming from when he called the 1975 a "fan's band" at Madison Square Garden. The data from the last two charts are taken from sources that purely rely on listener bases, showing rapid growth across a variety of fan-driven platforms. However, as Healy mentioned, the 1975 are rarely magazine cover stars, a lack of critical recognition that has lessened, but not fully disappeared, throughout the band's career. To understand this more fully, let's trace the 1975's origins from Wilmslow High School to the 20,000-capacity O2 Arena.
2002(-ish)
The members first interact as young teenagers at Wilmslow High School. A local council worker organized gigs for underaged kids to play.
2004(-ish)
Healy and Daniel begin writing their own music at around 15 years old.
The members perform as Me and You Versus Them...
...and then Drive Like I Do.
Jamie Oborne, the Malcom McLaren of the 1975, starts managing the quiet Manchester four-piece after they recorded a music video for an early version of the track "Robbers."
The band, under B I G S L E E P, release "Ghosts" and begin to attract label attention.
Nothing takes hold because the labels are confused about the band's inconsistent sound. Oborne takes matters into his own hands and creates Dirty Hit Records, the indie label the 1975 are still on to this day.
Either under B I G S L E E P or T H E S L O W D O W N, the members release an early version of "Sex" with "absolutely no contact info whatsoever," which makes a quiet, but visible, stir.
January 2012
Healy, Daniel, Hann, and MacDonald are officially operating as the 1975.
August 2012
Facedown, their first release as the 1975, is unveiled.
"The City" receives UK national radio airplay thanks to Huw Stephens and his Introducing... show.
November 2012
The Sex EP releases.
"Sex" returns as a 1975 track. The EP version is premiered by Zane Lowe on his BBC Radio 1 Show.
December 2012
The 1975 embark on their first UK/Ireland headlining tour.
The 1975 headline first ever sold-out gig at Manchester's 150-cap Sound Control. Catfish And The Bottlemen open.
"Chocolate" enters the UK Singles Chart at No. 84...
...and then peaks at No. 19 a little over a month later.
March 2013
The 1975 release the Music For Cars EP.
May 2014
IV is the final release of the 1975's series of EPs.
July 2013
"Sex," the album version, is Zane Lowe's "Hottest Record In The World."
The 1975 support the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park...
...and then play the legendary Reading and Leeds Festival.
September 2013
The 1975's self-titled debut album arrives at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart.
February 2014
The 1975 win Worst Band at the NME Awards.
October 2014
The 1975 are nominated for Best New Act at the Q Awards.
Healy's on-stage breakdown.
February 2015
The 1975 are nominated for Worst Band at the NME Awards.
June 2015
The 1975 delete all social media, hint at demise, but return with new pink aesthetic.
October 2015
The 1975 unveil the rambunctious "Love Me" and announce I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It.
The 1975 perform on Saturday Night Live.
February 2016
I Like It When You Sleep... arrives at No. 1 on the UK Chart and the US Billboard Chart.
February 2016
The 1975 are nominated for Best British Band and Best Fan Community at the NME Awards.
August 2016
The 1975 are make the short list for the prestigious Mercury Prize.
The 1975 perform with the BBC Philharmonic, what Healy calls the most important gig of their career.
October 2016
The 1975 are nominated for Best Pop Video UK at the UK Music Video Awards.
November 2016
The 1975 win Best Album and are nominated for Best Act In The World Today, Best Track, and Best Video at the Q Awards.
November 2016
The 1975 are nominated for Best Alternative at the MTV EMAs.
December 2016
The 1975 win Radio 1 Live Lounge Of The Year at the BBC Music Awards.
December 2016
The 1975 headline two consecutive shows at London's O2 Arena.
February 2017
The 1975 win Best Live Band and are nominated for Best British Band, Best Album, and Best Track at the NME Awards.
February 2017
The 1975 win British Group and are nominated for British Album Of The Year at the Brit Awards.
April 2017
The 1975 announce their third album, Music For Cars, titled after their third EP.
June 2017
The 1975 headline a sold-out show at New York City's Madison Square Garden.
November 2017
The 1975 are nominated for Best Act In The World Today at the Q Awards.
November 2017
The 1975 are nominated for Best British Band and Best Festival Headliner at the NME Awards.
March 2018
The 1975 delete all social media posts since July 2017, leaving a video showing "M U S I C F O R C A R S" underneath their neon-sign logo.
“Our first three albums are the story of a person; it’s always kind of been my story. It spanned adolescence to maturity, success and trying to mediate the two, and the third one is where we are now." - Matty Healy in NME October 2017.
Methodology: Touring data was retrieved from the Songkick API. Data on chart positions was taken from the United Kingdom Official Charts and Billboard. Playlist data was retrieved from the Spotify API. Lastly, YouTube data was retrieved from Social Blade.
