“I want to be sincere with everyone,” The 1975 frontman Matty Healy says, visibly choked up during the band’s Glastonbury Friday night headline set. “I’m probably the best songwriter of my generation…” If you’re unfamiliar, it might sound arrogant. If you’re a fan, you know he’s joking, sort of. There’s sincerity, facetiousness, and knowing self-parody layered in. As Healy’s mock-grandiose speech ends, the band launches into their breakout 2013 hit “Chocolate” – a funk-pop anthem about weed and small-town boredom, its phonetic lyrics flashing on screen for the crowd. A decade later, the once-ironic statement about being a generational songwriter has aged with a surprising amount of truth, and that’s part of the gag.
Using the language of Glastonbury, 2024 has been a fallow year for the band, having wrapped up a lengthy world tour for their last album Being Funny in a Foreign Language – a chaotic, self-aware performance art piece where Healy smoked, drank, ate raw meat, and did topless press-ups. It was an exaggerated, performative reaction to his pandemic-era deep dive into online subcultures and algorithm-driven exposure to manosphere-type content.
