Matty Healy is chewing on a slab of raw steak. Minutes later, after doing push-ups while images of Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Margaret Thatcher flash on screens, he crawls into an old rear-projection television and the stage goes black, thus concluding act one of the first UK date of a tour they’ve titled The 1975: At Their Very Best.
Fans with Twitter or TikTok will already be aware of Healy’s recent on-stage antics. Since the band’s tour began in the US last year, clips of the 33-year-old have gone viral: showing him berating security via Auto-Tune, snogging various fans and complaining about menthol cigarettes being thrown on stage. It’s the sort of memeable behaviour one has come to expect from the always-online Healy who, over the last decade, has become one of music’s most compulsively watchable provocateurs thanks to his inescapable charisma, open-mouthed honesty and his band’s self-aware and sparkling 80s pop-rock.
