I hadn’t gotten too deep into The 1975 until a few weekends ago when me and the family were driving home from a weekend in Chico. It’s a three hour drive which certainly lends enough time to get a few full album listens in. With my wife being a huge Taylor Swift fan it made sense to take The 1975’s self-titled debut for a spin considering the historical context. For those unaware, Swift famously dated singer Matty Heally for a hot minute in 2023 and following their breakup wrote a pretty solid takedown of Heally with the song “The Smallest Man in the World” off her album The Tortured Poets Department.
At any rate, I was pretty pumped to listen to The 1975. The band has earned a metric ton of accolades over the years, from the hipsters at Pitchfork to the mainstream gatekeepers at The Grammy’s. All of the band’s albums have hit #1 in their home country the UK, and they’ve been universally lauded in the states as well. So color me surprised when I felt this album was just a bit meh. Not trying to be a contrarian for effect here, but there wasn’t anything mind blowing about their power pop approach. Don’t get me wrong songs like “Chocolate” and “Robbers” are absolute ear candy, but the entire album kind of just blends in together after a few songs and sounds like 50 minutes of a song on a loop. It’s a rather pedestrian affair that never really ended up landing outside of some outsized big moments.
Standout Songs: “Chocolate”, “Robbers”, “She Way Out”, “Pressure”
