Matty Healy is lying on a leather couch, smoking a cigarette and running his hand feverishly across his naked chest and onto his crotch. That might sound like quite odd behaviour in front of a stadium full of people, but if you’ve been paying any attention whatsoever to The 1975’s ongoing tour, it’s all par for the course.
The Manchester-formed band are currently in the US, supporting their fifth studio album Being Funny in a Foreign Language with their At Their Very Best live shows. These performances have produced myriad viral social media clips, as Healy blurs the lines between “black pill performance art” (his words) and a pop-rock show. Fans have watched as the frontman bites chunks out of a supposedly raw steak, snogs fans from the audience, and feigns masturbation. At a sold-out Kia Forum in Los Angeles, in front of the influencers, the TikTokers, Kendall Jenner and Halsey, Healy continues – mostly – in the same vein.
