The 1975 has made the whole of its recorded output — its self-titled album and four EPs along with some remixes — available digitally, and frontman Matty Healy says the British quartet is looking forward to adding to that, although probably not for a little while.
“We’ve been (writing) quite a lot and there’s a lot of new music for the next record — but I’m not supposed to talk about it at the moment,” Healy tells Billboard. “We don’t even know what it is yet, really. It needs time to become its own thing. We’ve got a very good idea of what’s going on, but that could change, too.” Healy notes that the 1975 plans to tour until January of 2015, “then go make another record.” The goal, he adds, is to “put out an album two years to the day when we put out the last one — or at least as close as we can get. So it will come out on a Monday (Tuesday in the U.S.) in September of 2015.”
There’s certainly life left in “The 1975,” of course, which debuted at No. 1 on the U.K. album charts and No. 8 on the Billboard Top Rock Album survey, spitting out singles such as “The City,” “Chocolate” and “Girls.”
“I don’t really know how you kind of comes to terms with it, how deliriously fast of a rise it seems,” Healy says of the group’s success. People don’t understand how much of a grass roots thing it is; we were literally making records in my bedroom for fun, and then…all of this. My life is totally split into two periods, not successful and successful.”
And you won’t find Healy and company complaining about the latter, either.
“We embrace being a big pop band,” he says. “Not too many ‘cool’ bands are viewed like that, wanting to be mass appeal. As a band we’re coming up to 11 years now, and having a year of everything you’ve ever dreamed of doesn’t actually negate the rest of the time you spent as a band. It was good for us. It really allowed us to build a relationship between four people, and we never let ego take center stage. It’s a democracy, based on our relationships with each other. This band isn’t something I do frivolously; it’s not a party trick. It’s who I am. Understanding those things has been the most beneficial thing about this year. If you sign to a major label when you’re 16, you just go fucking mental, don’t you? Insane. With us, because we dreamed about it for so long, we just get to go out and go on tour and let things happen to you and feel like we can handle it.”
The 1975 is in the midst of a long North American tour that wraps up at the Governors Ball Music Festival on June 6 in New York. the group starts a European run on June 10 at the Mallorca Rocks Festival in Spain and will also be playing Lollapalooza on Aug. 3 in Chicago and Summer Sonic in Japan and Osaka on Aug. 16-17 before heading back to the U.K. for the Reading and Leeds Festivals on Aug. 22 and 24.
“Festivals can be a nightmare for us,” Healy notes. “Our band is based on theatrics and grandeur and glamour. There’s a lot of moving parts in our show. Obviously we have a responsibility to be as professional as possible, and in those situations people come there to enjoy themselves and have music be a release for them. If you start stressing out on stage it kills everyone’s vibe. So if everything’s going down you just have to embrace it and let it go wrong and feel like people aren’t going to judge you as long as you slog through it and do your best to give them what they came for.”