Tonight, The 1975’s world tour finally comes to an end with a headline set at Latitude festival. The band has been out on the road promoting second album I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It since way back in November 2015. The album has gone on to sell 269,569 copies, according to the Official Charts Company, making The 1975 one of the most significant UK breakouts in recent years.
But the band’s manager and label boss, Jamie Oborne of All On Red Management/Dirty Hit, says they won’t be resting on their laurels…
“I’ll be very happy when they’re home safe,” he told Music Week in an exclusive interview, “And then we’ll start making a new album on the 1st of August! I mean, they don't know how to hang about in truth. Matthew [Healy, frontman] and George [Daniel, drummer], they just don't know how to stop creating.
“I can see it coming like a tidal wave, Matthew needs to create something now,” he added. “I can see it in him. He needs it again. Which is amazing, I’m beyond excited about that. And slightly terrified, because the last album, we all put absolutely everything into it, and it was a real emotional rollercoaster.”
Healy recently told Beats 1's Zane Lowe that the new album would be called Music For Cars and described it as “an end of an era”. And Oborne said the frontman had evolved since the band’s early days.
“Matthew knows that he has a real social responsibility now,” said Oborne, who won Manager Of The Year at the 2017 Music Week Awards. “He plays in front of 5-10,000 kids every night. He knows that a lot of these kids are looking to him for answers. He’s got this suitcase that he carries around while on tour. It’s full of letters that are given to him, and he always says to me, he carries other people’s emotional baggage around the world. That’s what I love about artists: that commitment to the form, and to the audience, and the understanding that they have an artistic responsibility. It blows my mind.”
In the current issue of Music Week, Oborne reveals that – despite the success of I Like It…’s Apple Music streaming exclusive – the band’s next record will not be windowed. In the interview, he also talks about The 1975’s initial struggle for success, the philosophy behind his independent label, Dirty Hit, and his famously close relationship with Healy saying: “We have a rule, Matthew and I. We have like, a code word. If one of us feels super strongly about something, to the point where we have to say that to each other, then that thing has to be left alone. If it doesn't feel like what The 1975 would do, then it’s gone. But we don't argue about anything. I love him. I mean, I really do. My wife says he’s my other wife.”
To read the full interview, pick up this week’s Music Week magazine or, if you’re a subscriber, click here. To subscribe and never miss a vital music biz story, click here.
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