The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships (November 30, 2018) Album • Page 94

Its the name of Matty's new podcast.

 

It’s probably a short film like Kanye did with samples of all the tracks.

 

this album needs to have less filler than ILWYS

 

how to have less filler than no filler is a mystery

 

They’re playing 4d chess

 

ILYWS is perfect

 

only change id make is somehow figuring out how to fit how to draw in the track list

 

So here's a quick close reading of what we've gotten so far (still need to delve deeper into the lyrics and wait for more stuff before concluding anything). I think I need to plan out a series of essays once the album is out, but once you look at the pieces it's pretty clear how these start to add up to a larger concept. One thing's for sure, there's a LOT of thinking here on the band's part.

The Imagery:
Hello
A simple greeting displayed in a style that's reminiscent of multiple Apple advertisements wherein human characteristics are given to inanimate objects to make them more "friendly". Posted as an image on Twitter in a way that seems to be "speaking" for the band, even though it's a broad technologically-assisted association rather than a clear missive from a person. The greeting is transposed over a stealth fighter jet, simultaneously signaling fans to focus them on the start of a new era and obscuring something dangerous and fast that is already there so that it doesn't even need to cloak itself. It's also potentially a reference to Hello! magazine, a 30-year-old tabloid in the UK.

Isaiah 6:9-10

Pretty clear warning/proverb about the state of a distracted world, transposed over an image of students absorbed by their technology vs great art.

Modernity Has Failed Us
A child being entertained/raised by an online experience, signifying how we begin to be opiated at a young age.

Soon To Be Picturesque Ruins
A digital degradation of the "most liked photo ever", with only an accused pederast actor who allegedly preyed on other young actors still visible. It could imply that our artistic heroes all fail us, or perhaps even more nihilistically that we'll only remember the ones who do; but I think it's more an example of the corruption of art/beauty vis a vis Spacey's transgressions inherently corrupting his former work and work associates.

Planned Obsolescence
A dark joke about how physical relationships (and perhaps love/romance) are doomed by the finality of life, comparing them to how companies plan for technology to be constantly replaced by using nondurable materials in their construction (drawing a parallel to the frailty of the physical human body).

The Text:
Conversation 5
This is an excerpt of a real 2015 interaction between a Google AI bot (page 5) that some have interpreted as being illustrative how computers view the purpose of life. The machine contends that the ultimate goal of life is essentially preservation/to "live forever" and considers altruism the domain of God’s servants, suggesting that atheists don’t know true selflessness. It's also another example of a human finding their meaning in a machine, humanizing technology, and directly speaks to the aforementioned "planned obsolescence" of the physical form.

If I don't get to see the beauty of the end of culture;
Then at least I've seen the culture of the end of beauty.
A reference to Mario Vargas Llosa's Notes on the Death of Culture, a collection of essays that argues that culture has gone from "a kind of vital consciousness that constantly rejuvenated and revivified everyday reality" into "...largely a mechanism of distraction and entertainment" (which certainly strikes a note of Karcrashian panache). The quote seems to allege that instead of an endpoint of clear cultural thought and discourse, the speaker is seeing a society that focuses less on political, aesthetic, and moral conversations; instead preferring flash and distraction.

FIRST, DISOBEY. THEN LOOK AT YOUR PHONES.
A reference to a piece of graffiti from the May 1968 riots (more info below). Seems like a command to flout authority, undercut by an allowance to be distracted again once the disruption is over. This is about urgency, a call to action to break out of a cycle of malaise to do what should be done.

Poetry is in the streets in full living colour.
To me, this is the key to the whole concept, as it's the first clearly actionable reference from all of the marketing so far and works as a self-referential homage that goes back to the very beginning of The 1975 project. It's a translation from French that alludes to the 1968 Paris student riots, which took place when art students and the youth in general of Paris used art to rebel against the government when they felt like they weren’t being heard. It had a profound impact on French society and it began a series of reforms that led to higher wages, improved working conditions, and major modernizations in education.

 

if you take off the 1975, please be naked, nana, she lays down, and the title track, then it is a solid album.

 

I really missed this viral aspect of music. Shone’s was still the best. That album is still the worst haha.

 

Boo this man

 

taking off nana is too fucking far

 

its an amazing song, but doesn't fit the album at all

 

Title track is great wtf

 

yes it does its placed after paris for a reason both nana and she lays down are supposed to be their own little section of the album to quietly close it out and a really emotional and stripped back note. the transition from this will be my dream and paris into nana and she lays down is probably the most interesing stretch of the record to me honestly

 

every song that i listed is great on its own, but a lot of the ambient tracks just seem out of place on this album. The album is pop, then acoustic, then ambient, and not a single sound ties the entire album together. It's a good album, but Self-titled is more cohesive.

 

but all the pop songs have the same ambience to them as the more experimental tracks, the entire album strikes a certain mood the entire time while it hops from style to style, and i think the sequencing of the album is great at dividing up the album so it flows well. lostmyhead into ballad into somebody else is a particularly stunning sequence of music that moves from one movement to the next.

 

I always think of the ILIWYS album as a triptych, same as the first one.

 

agree to disagree. Somebody Else is one of the most infectious/best songs I've heard though, and If I Believe You is astounding songwriting.

 

i mean yeah i dont have a negative thing to say about any song on the album and would probably call it my favorite album of all time at this point so im a little biased

 

Log off.

 

Thinking about how narcissistic the first pair of songs is compared to the last pair of songs is one of the most vindicating parts of the whole experience of the album. hard to put into words but the album is perfectly paced to destroy you basically lol

 

Yep. I love "Paris" as the sort of *breakthrough* moment, where he's coming to terms with a halcyon past (whether that be romance, drugs, fames, whatever) that he knows he shouldn't go back to.

 

If you acknowledged that ILIWYS is actually a triple album then you'd understand why it works. First album is pop, second album is ambient, and third album is acoustic. C'mon guys haven't we distinguished between album, double album, and triple album by now?