Nope, that’s not my idea of a perfect date. That’s how I would describe The 1975’s “Ugh!” music video, if I were asked. Despite the fact that the song, according to Matthew Healy, was about him “being flippant about cocaine”, the music video was more relaxed and toned down than the previous song, “Love Me”.
This time around, there were no sexy show girls, dressed in colorful tight one-piece swimsuits, 2D cut-outs of famous celebrities like Ed Sheeran, Elvis Presley, Harry Styles and Miley Cyrus, and Matty’s blue eye shadow and bottle of wine. Whereas the music video for “Love Me” had a more festive and after party mood, “Ugh!” was more like the middle part of a gig where the band would sing something more mellow to let everyone catch their breaths and calm down for a bit.
It definitely had A LOT of dancing in it. It was pretty funky and groovy, even for me who actually likes shaking my booty and shimmy-ing my shoulders every now and then. The music video did not just show Matty holding a mic, in his half-naked glory, and shaking his booty here and there. It showed him wearing a SWEATER – three or four pairs of very comfy looking sweaters, to be specific – as he dances and prances around to the beat. I don’t know why, but I thought that gave the video a different “feel”. I mean, if I watched the video and muted the sound, it would still give me that sort of “dance-able” feel.
Matty can indeed dance. It’s not just crazy, drunk-dancing, like in the “Love Me” music video. He was swaying his hips, shaking his body, bobbing his head and moving his shoulders all throughout the video, while the guys stayed in their proper places and did their thing with their instruments.
I also found the lighting and the artistic “minimalist” set in the video mesmerizing and fitting for the mood of the song. The lack of creative designs and decorations or extra people in the video made it better for me to watch it.
But then again, with Matty showing off some of his moves here and there, who needs backup dancers or extra people in the video? I love how the color of the lights in the background changes with every beat of the song - from black to white to pink to purple to that “kinda-creepy-TV-noise-thingy-that-happens-before-Sadako-comes-out”. It was pretty clever.
In a recent interview with MTV.com, Matty mentioned that they have “made a record but every song sounds different from the other one.” He added, “We just thought that our choices of songs... that would just be based on confidence.” They were definitely confident enough with their first track, “Love Me”, which he described in the interview as “bombastic”. He admitted that they “wanted to open the record with it” and that drummer George said to him once, "If we don't go with it now, when are we gonna go with it?" They felt that it was more like “a statement at the forefront of a campaign”.
Now that Matty and the rest of the band had proven that they are indeed going pop, probably experimenting with different heterogeneous sounds, and leaving behind the whole “indie-alternative-rock” sound behind, I’m not really sure how to feel. As a fan of their music, and not just a fan of how gorgeous they are, I have come to like their old sound. It took a while for me to love “Love Me” and I’m just getting the “hang” of “Ugh!”; so it was not like the first time I heard “Chocolate” and went “Woah! I love it!” Based on these two tracks, their sophomore album, “I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it”, would definitely feel like I’m in the car and I’m searching for the “perfect” radio station so I would only hear bits and parts of different songs with different genres. There’s no theme or solid concept here. It was just The 1975 making music and enjoying it. In the same interview with MTV.com, Matty said, “We didn't know what to do. We made a decision that we just want it to be truly expressive and it'd be like in the pursuit of the truth.”
He actually admitted that this album was heavily influenced by the music that he listens to on his own inside his room such as Destiny’s Child, Brian McKnight and some 90’s RnB. He said that without the song "Sex” on their arsenal, that it was the only rock song that they have. “Everything else has always been groove base. Everything that we've done has kind of been founded in our love of black music,” he explained.
Although I miss the blue eye shadow and the eye-rolling and facial expressions from “Love Me”, I did like all the adorable “Matty-dancing-in-a-sweater” cuts here, especially the final part where he continued dancing even after the song had already ended.
I read Matty’s interview with The Guardian and he explained more about the band’s new sound. He said, “My love for minimalist art and architecture - the things I’ve become interested in as a grownup - have fed into this record. . Take Chris Martin - you can put his voice across anything and it will sound like Coldplay. I don’t want that: ."I want the songs to feel like 1975 songs, not necessarily sound like themI want it to feel like the 1975
Very well said, Matty. And now I totally get it. I understand the whole transition into pop and all the blue eye shadow and pink neon lights. They’re just evolving into a much more perfect version of their band and they don’t care. Because for them, there is no genre – they do not want to be restricted to just one type of music for the rest of their lives.
