The 1975 - Being Funny in a Foreign Language (Oct 14, 2022) Album • Page 107

As far as lyrics go, I think what might bother people is the insane tonal whiplash from one line to another in some of the tracks. Can’t think of an example of the top of my head, will offer one later when I’m at my computer.

I do think Matty sells them all and I would dislike a ton of lines more if he wasn’t the one delivering them!

I am loving this album so far and I think they finally nailed the slow-paced back half, unlike ABIIOR, which has a couple slow songs I don’t love (Inside Your Mind, Mine, Be My Mistake).

 

to your second point, i dont think anyone but matty could even write these lines. especially the specific jarring ones you're referring to. like i said the other day, his worst lines are the ones that are just...generic. but also i think one of the big themes of matty's writing is the mentality of both millenials and gen z, and that tonal whiplash represents the world we grew up in, where one minute i could be watching a cute video about cats and the next im accidentally watching a beheading (extreme example and also a real one). his style is a reflection of growing up and living in that type of a world.

 

also i will never stand for inside your mind slander, i must call it out every time that song is unreal

 

I also think you can say that about a lot of good lyricists? Tom Waits. Justin Pierre. Leonard Cohen. Prince (when he was focused on lyrics). Craig Finn.

Their lyrics are intrinsically tied to the persona, voice, and oeuvre of the person singing them and wouldn’t work even a tiny bit as well in other hands.

I don’t see that as a flaw.

 

Ooh I like this understanding of his lyrical style!

Hahaha no hate, I’m just in like with it.

 

best examples i can think of where it works the best:

"you smashed a glass into pieces/and thats around the time i left/and you were coming across as clever/and then you lit the wrong end of your cigarette"

"you said im full of diseases/your eyes were full of regret/and then you took a picture of your salad/ and put in on the internet"



these are two of the most hard hitting and utterly fucking absurd lines ive ever heard in my entire life. i relate to them in ways that make me want to bawl my eyes out and in ways that make me want to laugh my ass off. its absolute genius. i fucking love his writing. like the extent to which this speaks to my lived experience is actually scary. i feel seen.

 

maybe my favorite aspect of Matty’s writing is that he’s almost always teetering on the edge of completely losing the plot, and he really has a gift for making seemingly disconnected thoughts come together in a way that can feel almost magical. he also isn’t precious about stuff and will dance back and forth between “good” and “bad” taste, but it all feels incredibly self-aware. it’s also clear his brain/thoughts run at like a million miles a minute and I relate to that all too well.

 

Love those lyrics and that song!

The line that knocked the metaphorical wind out of me on my first listen of the new album was:
“You’re making an aesthetic out of not doing well. Then mining all the bits of you you think you can sell.”

I’ve got so many friends doing this right now and I don’t know how to help them or if they even want help.

 

that is now my favorite matty line now because i was living like that for way too long. its fucked. and to tell you the truth i didnt want help for the longest time. got so mad when anyone tried to help me. resented them for years for it. and these are the people closest to me in my life. unfortunately it took one too many near death experiences to bring me back from the brink and even then i cant even tell you why but something finally changed in me in a way i cant even really explain. its really weird and im still trying to process it and work through because its sort of currently happening, im only a little over 3 months removed what i guess you would call my "bottom." but ive never, ever felt the way i currently feel right now. its honestly really weird.

 

Why has no one else noticed this yet

 

I’ve been following your journey for a long time and I’m glad you’re in a good spot now. Keep it up!

 

Gonna throw a couple vocal ones in here, I think I may have said already that the phrasing/melody of All I Need To Hear's verses borrows from She Lays Down, but also the first line of About You has strong similarities to the first line of The Birthday Party (in melody, delivery, and lyrics)

 

Also I've been having a hard time gathering my thoughts on About You. It's somehow both deeply comforting and deeply cutting to me. Hard to describe but it's like it's warm and cold at the same time. I think it's the rich instrumental combined with some all-too-relatable lyrics. I dunno but it's incredible and really makes me feel some type of thing.

Edit: there's also a spot around 3:45 where in my headphones it feels like Matty's vocal sinks into the bed of distortion and it is absolutely sublime

 

Busted out the headphones for this and

 

Have yet to do this but it’s gonna be something

 

Ok I’m fully obsessed with this record so I’m gonna dig into the details a bit more than I already have.

In general I really like how the strings and woodwinds take over most of the super chaotic, unmelodic stuff that would normally happen on glitchy synths in a recent 1975 record. It feels really organic. Someone else already mentioned that the studio chatter kind of fills that role too, and that also definitely contributes to bringing life into these songs.

There’s also so many random flourishy 1975 details, right down to little background sounds/noises that only happen once and I can’t even identify. No other band really does it like that. Some bands make those sounds into part of the beat, but this band never reuses them. They add variety, especially when they’re into a long groove. Also a couple specific touches I can identify and gotta point out: I love when the bass in the Happiness intro quotes the “show me your love” melody. And the chime hit on “the SAME damn thing” in the bridge of About You is so, so perfect.

I also gotta complement the vocal production on here. It’s never overdone, always tasteful, but it runs the full gamut. The formant shifting on The 1975, the distortion sprinkled throughout Oh Caroline, the lush reverb on About You, etc. Some of that is also just down to Matty changing his delivery (like on Part of the Band and Looking For Somebody). It actually almost never reuses the same vocal style twice. Kind of incredible while maintaining a signature “sound” throughout the album.

I guess in summary, it’s really a deceptively varied record texturally, while somehow maintaining real cohesion. That’s the platonic ideal to me.

 

Thus is all bang the fuck on

 

i might go take it out for a night walk

 

Chiming in on the lyrics discourse to say that while they aren't awful, they can certainly be uncomfortable in ways a lot of artists won't touch with a 10 foot pole and I really appreciate that.

 

Sorry if it’s been said already (no, I’m not): BJ Burton and DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ are the secret ingredients that take this album to the next level

 

Though Being Funny, which was recorded this year, generally sounds like a more sophisticated take on the 1975 at their most approachable, it didn’t start out that way. For a few months across 2021, Healy and Daniel had writing sessions with BJ Burton, best known for his innovative production work on modern experimental rock touchstones like Bon Iver’s 22, A Million and Low’s radical last two albums, Double Negative and HEY WHAT. By all accounts, the sessions were difficult.

Over email, Burton explains that Healy and Daniel “work really differently” from him. “They’re always pulling up songs from Spotify, or checking another reference for a chord progression. I wanted to help change that, I guess,” he says. “There were moments, sparks where songs were being bred, but ultimately we made a bunch of early demos.” When he learned that Healy and Daniel also started talking to Jack Antonoff, the most in-demand pop-rock producer on the planet, Burton lost all motivation and bowed out. “It was a huge blow to my confidence when they met with Jack,” he admits. “It still stings, honestly.”

Though Healy admires a daring musical left-turn—he cites 22, A Million, Kanye’s Yeezus, and his favorite band Radiohead’s Kid A as this century’s best ones—he admits that the freeform sessions with Burton were very hard. “If you give me, BJ, and George too much rein, we’ll just hang ourselves in glitch and weirdness,” he says. Still, Healy adds that they made “some amazing shit” with Burton, and hints that he may revisit some of those stranger sounds in the future, perhaps on the next 1975 album or a solo record.





the guy has a writing credit on one track. hard to see how he made the album what it is. same goes for dj sabrina. this is pretty clearly a george and jack project inside and out. and its a great pairing of production styles. its gorgeous

 

I just got a pair of Beyerdynamic DT 1990s Thursday and this was among the first things that got tested on it, and I feel this. I think that totally helped me immediately hear a lot of the brilliance in the production.

 

Album rules

What a good fucking band

 

Self-titled > Being Funny > Iliwys >>>>>>>>>> notes = brief inquiry