Multifaceted music: engaging young fans in politics

Chloe Hares

Once a rather small indie band who were admired almost solely by grunge teenage girls on Tumblr (not an insult, I was one of those girls) in 2014, The 1975 have become one of the biggest bands of the 2020s. This past year, particularly since their replacement for Rage Against The Machine at Reading and Leeds Festival 2022, the band became exposed to a new younger demographic - the age of people who upload festival snippets to TikTok. With this, word spread about their late 2022 album ‘Being Funny in a Foreign Language’, and 2023 tour, ‘The 1975 - At Their Very Best’, of which further videos from the tours have gone viral. Frontman and nepobaby, Ma y Healy, was certainly born to perform. He brings charismatic yet enigmatic energy and is cognizant of his audience and the media. He curates a narcissistic façade we hate to love, but when he speaks seemingly so honestly about politics we realise he is in fact, a British citizen as well who has seen many political failings and thus has valid opinions. The tiktokification of The 1975 has really done them a favour in pu ing them on the pop culture map, but has this band of just four men from Cheshire really changed their branding in light of this, or has it just been finally uncovered?

Their debut self-titled album, and their proceeding work ‘I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it’ mostly contain songs about sex and drugs, with the odd songs on trepidation and grief. What you would expect a northern indie band to be singing about in the peak of Tumblr's use. They released an album in 2018 as Healy started recovering from heroin addiction called ‘A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships’. Their music became more experimental with meaningful political lyrics, most notably the song ‘Love It If We Made It’, in which Healy screams “truth is only hearsay, we're just left to decay, modernity has failed us and I'd love it if we made it”. It seems the band predicted Covid-19 two years prior, but from this point in their career the band (especially Healy) have been vocal about their political stance.

However, being the bizarrely intelligent and self-aware man that he is, Healy has set aside time in his concerts to talk about politics, ranging from the need for Labour to represent the working class and supporting industrial action. Often this takes place in tune to the introduction to songs and thus concert goers and TikTok users will find themselves singing these philosophies to their own amusement. So, Healy is now catering to the audience knowing they want more than just music; The 1975 fans are intrigued by almost anything Healy has to say. So far, it seems he is yet to say something majorly harmful and does appear to be speaking out because he is passionate and perhaps wishes to prove himself human like the rest of us.

This really isn't new, though. It is something we have seen done in the music industry before to the extreme where we cannot recognise the original artist. I am, of course, talking about Steven Morrissey - frontman of The Smiths. Morrissey's lyrics avoid a gendered perspective and often criticise the monarchy, education system, religion and the government with the kind of arguments which we still consider today, pu ing him far ahead of his time. In spite of this progressive outlook during Thatcherite Britain, Morrissey seems to have regressed. In more recent years, he has expressed sympathy towards the UKIP party, spoken out against multiculturalism, and made misogynistic comments on well-established women in the music industry. His bi erness and outlandishness seems to be everything that his 1982 self would despise. We question if this is a pitiful a empt to stay relevant? A late appeal to new demographics? Or a plain narcissistic urge to create a legacy, no ma er how notorious? Regardless, while once delivering insightful and important messages, his need to thrive off of such has led him to become largely 'cancelled'.

So, while politics and pop culture go hand in hand to deliver varied political voices, Morrissey's career should be considered a cautionary tale. When a celebrity gets political for seemingly no other reason but popularity, it is a marketing technique. But we cannot take away the fact they are people with the right to free speech, and their views should be considered; it would be naïve to follow them completely and it should be encouraged that everyone does their own political research. Healy has seen what can happen to those who become obsessed with maintaining a name and so should feel warned on orating with vain and selfish motivations.

(Chris Devers