HC Article – 10 Year Anniversary of The 1975’s ‘I Like It When You Sleep’: A Tribute
The 1975 is a band whose philosophical, political, and emotional reflections will always remain relevant, even if their sound is fated to become outdated. Their second album, ‘I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful and yet so unaware of it’ celebrates its 10-year anniversary on the 26th February, and it will remain influential for many years to, come.
The album engages with various modern day concerns, as well as questions of identity, depictions of love, depression, drugs, and grief. It would be impossible to cite a single meaning of this album, as the band enjoy looping their listeners into their different musings regarding a multitude of complex topics. However, this album at its core is reflexive; we are complicit as it attempts to navigate identity, changing relationships, and political conversations. The most popular tracks uphold a new and unique sound; reviewers upon its release have described the album as pop, new wave, dance-rock, indie-rock, pop-punk, and soul, incorporating synth-pop, jazz, and R&B elements.
The album opens with tracks navigating identity alongside fame: ‘Love Me’ and ‘UGH!’ present an ironic egotism, exploring how fame affects self-expression and how you are perceived, with tracks like ‘Paris’ displaying a high-profile, aestheticised city lifestyle in its more depressing and nuanced light. These explorations of identity are what make the band so authentic, they are not selling us a brand in their music, but allowing us to join them as they figure out their new identities alongside growing in popularity.
Tracks like ‘Loving Someone’ and ‘If I Believe You’ enter into a sociopolitical discourse, regarding media influences on young people, and questions about religion, respectively. ‘Loving Someone’ takes all the complex debates happening within modern media, regarding topics like sexuality and disaffected youth, and places this in opposition to simply loving each other, with complex fast-paced verses contrasting lighter choruses emphasising that ‘you should be loving someone. ‘If I Believe You’ brings religion into question, with a sceptical tone debating the existence of a God and the use of religion as a power tool, which holds a relevance to modern-day discussions of religion’s role in making laws.
My personal favourite on this album is ‘A Change of Heart’, where the band depicts the melancholy and nostalgic sadness of realising you have fallen out of love with someone; an experience of losing the once rose-tinted glasses. What I like about this song is how it avoids presenting the loss of love as overwhelming and cinematic, instead, it reflects on a quiet acceptance that love has changed and feelings have died away, in a way that feels very raw and real. This song hallmarks a growth for the band, in their subtle references to songs from their debut album, ‘The 1975’: the more toxic and passionate love expressed in ‘Robbers’ opens with ‘she had a face straight out a magazine’, but in ‘A Change of Heart’ this becomes, ‘you used to have a face straight out of a magazine, but now you just look like anyone’. The song also notes that ‘I never found love in the city’ recalling the previous optimism in their debut album’s ‘The City’. Details like this are what make the album so personal; their growth as artists is mapped through nostalgic reflection on experiences.‘Somebody Else’ compliments the sentiment in ‘A Change of Heart’, as it expresses a frustration of not being in love with someone anymore, but not feeling ready to let them go, and its digitised soul and synth sound makes it one of the most popular tracks on the album.
Songs like ‘Nana’ and ‘She Lays Down’, reflect on more personal experiences, with simple guitar and emotive vocals, thinking about things like grief and drug abuse, and adding a sense of emotional authenticity alongside their more upbeat and political tracks.‘I like it when you sleep’ and ‘Please Be Naked’ are examples of their trademark, almost wordless tracks, where they seem to express emotions equally powerfully without words, allowing for a more subjective connection to take place with these songs. The album also tackles mental fragmentation and a sense of detachment from yourself through simple lyrics and impactful instrumental sections in ‘Lostmyhead’ and ‘The Ballad of Me and My Brain’.
To end on a lighter note, their collection of more upbeat and light-hearted tracks, described in reviews as ‘sounding like glitter’ are guaranteed to lift your mood, with songs like ‘She’s American’, and ‘This Must Be My Dream’ providing a balance to some of their emotionally heavier tracks. And of course, there is a reason they have so often closed concerts with ‘The Sound’, as this track accumulates a pure happiness towards the end of the album, with simple, whimsical lyrics describing the beauty of a knowing connection to someone.
Hopefully this article has convinced you to get this album back onto your playlists, as it (and arguably each one of their albums) has different songs relating to many different moods, with a rare authenticity that isn’t easily replicated