The 1975‘s second album, a chart-topper on both sides of the Atlantic, hasn’t been out three months yet. But the group, currently touring North America, already has new music in mind — perhaps sooner rather than later.
“I’m always making an album,” frontman Matthew Healy tells Billboard, noting that new music may arrive sometime over the next year. “I’m always confused by the language of bands who are ‘going to make a record’ or not being able to write on tour. I think that’s just something you do — whenever, wherever.”
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Meanwhile, Healy and company are still reveling in the No. 1 debut of I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It in both the U.K. and on the Billboard 200 following its Feb. 26 release.
“That’s quite an amazing statistic, really,” Healy says. “We joined a handful of artists who have ever done that who are all kind of the biggest artists in the world, so it was amazing. I think it stands for our fans base being so hardcore. I think it stands for the Internet. I think it stands for lots of things, but we’re deeply humbled by it.”
It was also a bit different for The 1975 than when the quartet’s self-titled debut hit No. 1 and went platinum in its homeland.
“When the first album went to No. 1 we could feel it going to No. 1 and we knew it was going to happen,” Healy explains. “I think I had a real desire to be known, not necessarily in an egotistical way, but I wanted a voice, so there was an element of that. On this one I’d really left all those kinds of feelings of ego or fear at the door and I really made an honest record.”
The 1975 is getting ready to roll out the second U.S. single from I Like It When You Sleep… “The Sound” was actually written while the group was making its first album, but it didn’t quite fit. It did, however, provide a building block for the sophomore set.
“I think we just made an album that provided context to that song,” Healy says. “I think that song is so poppy in its sensibilities, but like everything we do in The 1975 it’s juxtaposed to a narrative that’s a little more dark or introspective, and I think this album was the perfect vehicle for it. It’s the next single in the U.K., but we haven’t really started with American radio yet for ‘The Sound.’ But people really seem to like it when we play it in concert.”