The 1975s front man wants a clean slate.
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And yet I dont feel lonely in this, Healy adds.
That can be one of the things I really struggle with.
But I feel like were all in this together.
Humanity is quite engaged at the moment.
Its no secret that hes used narcotics.
Slow-down-and-numb drugs, anything that knocked him out.
He was never the cocaine-y party guy at five in the morning, he says.
Unconsciousness is my drug of choice.
But he has a way of making even smoking heroin sound like a chore.
But if you just smoke it at night and go to bed … Ugh, so bad.
Youll wake up with the worst hangover ever.
And I cant deal with hangovers.
At that point, climate change was Healys big-picture melancholy.
He told me then that if the world does go to shit, Ill just fucking do drugs.
With the world, in fact, going to shit, he admits he was tempted.
It felt like an excuse to be high all the time, he says.
But Ive managed not to.
Hes gained a sense of mission.
We need to sacrifice things; theres no room for passive shit anymore, he continues.
And that means adhering to the necessities of the planet.
Its a new time now.
From one of rock musics most notorious egoists, this sounds a little like perspective.
This was in the small English town of Wilmslow, an upscale suburb of Manchester.
The wider world first heard of them in 2013 with their eponymous debut LP, which reached No.
When Healy isnt using drugs, the window for his focus gets a lot bigger.
Its not a battle.
But forNotes,Healy begins with Greta Thunberg delivering a five-minute screed on ecological crisis.
(On the first tour, I saw a kid with a 1975 neck tattoo, Healy recalls.
Its fucking wild.)
But what does he expect when hes made a career of sharing his?
Modern stardom requires authenticity and self-revelation, which means constant engagement with fans on social media.
But it soon turned out that Healy was a natural on Twitter.
Another widely derided incident occurred as COVID-19 kicked into high gear.
Healy says hes learning to take it all in stride.
As you get a bit older, you just cant be hassled with that fucking shit.
You dont need to know what some guy thinks about you.
(The 1975 now have a distribution deal in the U.S. with Interscope Records.)
Healy describes their teenage selves as maybe a bit pretentious.
Super into philosophy and really left-field German house music and other really weird shit.
But, pretentiousness aside, they always knew they were destined to be pop stars.
Otherwise, why bother?
Weve always wanted to be truly subversive, says Healy.
Being a loud band that no one listens to is great.
But its not aspirational; its a hobby.
It was around this time Healy got heavily into drugs.
He needed something to block out the mania of his new life.
Its all self-medication, he surmises.
Despite their pleas to him to stop using, he told them he intended to keep smoking heroin.
The next day, I realized that was absolute fucking bullshit.
He insists his drug use was an on-and-off thing, something I used to pick up and put down.
But it hasnt fractured any of my really serious relationships, he says.
Any transient relationships that I have are just not there anymore.
So you have your really, really close friends and family and they get it.
Theyre going to get it that you cant come for Christmas.
And then all of my jokes in my songs about being a cliche wouldnt land.
Obviously, I wrote the album without the knowledge of [the pandemic] happening, he says.
It felt like we could see the cows moving or something.
It felt like the moment will not hold, surely.
There had to be some kind of mass event or mass cultural shift.
According to George Daniel, the album feels like a warm hug.
