I love many things in this life. Toast that lands butter side up. Group chats that understand my humour. That one H&M blazer that makes me look mysteriously successful. But nothing rewires my soul quite like a new album from The 1975.
And it has been… a while.
Long enough that my playlists are starting to recycle like a washing machine on spin cycle. Long enough that I have memorised every lyric, every synth swell, every emotionally ambiguous whisper that Matty has ever murmured into a microphone. Long enough that my Spotify Wrapped is politely asking me to diversify.
I have not made an album my personality in a long time. Not in the way where you wake up thinking about Track Seven. Not in the way where you assign songs to people who did not consent to the analysis. Not in the way where your camera roll becomes lyric screenshots and blurry concert lights and notes app manifestos titled Why this bridge destroyed me.
This is a public request. A formal plea. A musically dramatic kneel.
We need a new album. Soon. Swiftly.
With emotional devastation and impeccable production values.
I am ready to be rearranged.
I know it’s me that’s supposed to love you
The 1975, “Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You”
And when I’m home you know I got you
Is there somebody who can love you?
Why a new era from The 1975 would instantly reorganise my entire existence.
Every time The 1975 drops an album, the internet does not merely listen. It restructures. Suddenly everyone is wearing black again. Suddenly everyone is talking about sincerity versus irony like they have a doctorate in indie rock philosophy. Suddenly group chats are arguing over which song will inevitably ruin them in supermarkets.
Their albums are not just collections of tracks. They are phases. They arrive with aesthetics, fonts, vibes, and a moral crisis or two. You do not casually consume a 1975 album. You enter it. You redecorate emotionally. You start walking faster with headphones in like you are late to something cinematic.
I’ve been watching you walk
The 1975, “Inside Your Mind”
I’ve been learning the way that you talk
The back of your head is at the front of my mind
Soon I’ll crack it open just to see what’s inside your mind
And the thing is, they always get you when you least expect it. You go in thinking, oh fun, a bop. You leave clutching your chest because a lyric casually dismantled your understanding of modern romance, technology, or your last situationship.
I miss that feeling. The collective internet moment where everyone is suddenly awake at midnight refreshing streaming platforms like Victorian children waiting for bread deliveries. The mad dash to tweet first reactions. The academic level discourse over production choices. The inevitable sentence, this is their best work actually, followed by twelve tweets explaining why.
A new album from them is not just music. It is seasonal affective disorder but in a fun way. It is autumn jackets. It is night buses. It is staring out of windows pretending you are in a music video. It is re reading old messages you absolutely should not be re reading.
My personality needs fresh material. My soul is running on archived heartbreak.
One day, the man, whose name was @SnowflakeSmasher86
Turned to his friend, the internet, and he said, “Internet, do you love me?”
The internet looked at him and said, “Yes
I love you very, very, very, very, very, very much
I am your best friend
In fact, I love you so much that I never, ever want us to be apart, ever again, ever”“I would like that”, said the man
…
“I feel like I could tell you anything, ” he said, on a particularly lonely day
“You can, you can tell me anything
I’m your best friend, anything you say to me will stay strictly between you and the internet”…
And then he died in his lonely house, on the lonely street, in that lonely part of the world
The 1975, “The Man Who Married a Robot / Love Theme”
You can go on his Facebook
Why I am spiritually overdue for a record to emotionally overanalyse.
There is a specific kind of listener The 1975 creates. The sort of person who does not just hear a lyric but immediately pauses the song, stares into space, and says out loud, excuse me. The kind who builds entire emotional theses out of one line about modern life. The kind who screenshots Genius annotations like they are studying for finals.
That is me. Hello. I have a problem and it is called loving a band that writes like they accidentally swallowed a philosophy book and a diary at the same time.
This conversation’s not about reciprocation no more
The 1975, “UGH!”
But I’m gon’ wait until you finish so I can talk some more
About me and my things, my car, my living
And how I’m giving it up, giving it up again
Their music is perfect for romanticising the mundane. Sitting on the bus becomes a montage. Walking home at night becomes a reckoning. Texting someone back becomes a narrative arc. Suddenly your life has a soundtrack and it is mildly existential but very danceable.
Without a new album, I am stuck recycling old feelings. And while nostalgia is lovely, I crave new devastation. Fresh grooves. A chorus that feels illegal to play in public because you will levitate. A bridge that forces you to confront who you were in 2019 versus who you are now and why both versions need a hug.
Do you think I have forgotten about you?
And there was something ’bout you that now I can’t remember
The 1975, “About You”
It’s the same damn thing that made my heart surrender
And I miss you on a train, I miss you in the morning
I never know what to think about
I want lyrics I can assign to strangers. I want to argue about which track is criminally underrated before the first week is over. I want to dramatically declare allegiance to one song and then betray it forty eight hours later because another one snuck up on me.
Is that too much to ask? Probably.
Am I still asking? Absolutely.
What I am manifesting for the next era with alarming specificity.
I am not saying I have a Pinterest board for this imaginary album but I am also not not saying that.
I want glossy synths colliding with acoustic confessionals. I want something danceable that ruins my emotional equilibrium. I want lyrics that feel like they were written at 2:22 a.m. on a kitchen floor with a phone on two percent battery. I want irony. I want sincerity. I want both arguing in the same verse.
So I heard you found somebody else
The 1975, “Somebody Else”
And at first, I thought it was a lie
I took all my things that make sounds
The rest I can do without
Give me songs about fame, love, digital exhaustion, being annoying online, being earnest in private, watching the world wobble while still wanting someone to hold your hand at a bus stop. Give me something I can scream in my room and then analyse in an essay I never submit.
I also want an aesthetic era. Fonts. Colours. Jackets. Mysterious teaser posts that send fandoms into decoding mode like the Da Vinci Code but with better hair. I want cryptic captions. I want blurry studio photos. I want people zooming into reflections in sunglasses going, WAIT. Or maybe, I just want all this because they literally have no posts on Instagram.
Mostly, though, I want honesty that feels messy and melodic. Songs that sound like late nights and open tabs. Tracks that understand the modern condition is mostly just feeling too much while scrolling.
Feed me the soundtrack to my existential crises. Thank you.
My headphones are empty and my heart is ready.
No, this is not just about boredom. This is about cultural infrastructure. About the deep human need to attach your identity to a fresh set of songs and let them narrate your life for six to nine business months.
I want a new album so I can walk dramatically again. I want new lyrics to quote in bios. I want to feel seen by a song I did not even know I needed yet. I want to argue with strangers online about production choices in a respectful but emotionally intense way.
I am ready. My playlists are waiting. My personality has an opening.
And all I do is sit and think about you
The 1975, “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)”
If I knew what you’d do
Collapse my veins, wearing beautiful shoes
It’s not living, if it’s not with you
So to The 1975, if you are somehow sensing this through the universe, through vibes, through mysterious creative ripples in the air.
Please. Drop the album.
I am begging politely but with incredible passion.
Signed,
a listener who has not emotionally rebranded in far too long and is starting to feel like that is a health concern.
If you’re camping out, emotionally, for the next album — visit Her Campus at MUJ. And for a tour in my corner, visit Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ.