Matty Healy: “If you’re still making art in your 30s, you’re either wadded or good, and I’m both”
Matty Healy, frontman of The 1975, has shown unsteady confidence in a new interview with The Guardian, in which he bragged of being both “good” and “wadded”.
A couple of weeks before The 1975’s headline appearances at the Reading and Leeds Festival in the UK, Healy sat down with Alexis Petridis of The Guardian in Tokyo, Japan, where the band had been touring at the time.
Early on in the interview, Healy discusses a lapse in self-confidence and awareness that plagued him during the Covid-19 lockdown period. Labelling the period “a global anxiety attack,” Healy said he “tries to think that I’m just doing my own thing, but every time I look back, it always really makes sense in that time. I’m constantly looking for things to reaffirm what’s going on and give me some confidence because I don’t know what I’m doing.”
This statement seemed odd coming from the mouth of someone usually so self-aware. After all, Healy has a knack for writing songs in which, as he says, “there are so many self-references – it’s always me in the songs talking about being in the song, like a character in a film that knows he’s a character in a film”.
It seems, however, that in these post-lockdown days, Healy and his group are as self-assured as ever as they named their forthcoming world tour, The 1975 at Their Very Best. “Not from us being cocky, it’s genuine,” he says. Adding: “I’ve been clean for ages, I’m at the gym all the time, everyone feels good.” He smiles. “Even though I started this interview saying I don’t know what I’m doing.”
It seems that Healy’s indecision may stem from the preceding week in Tokyo, in which the band attempted to rehearse through jet lag and a lack of marijuana. “I’ve spent a lot of time in the hotel room, I’ve been thinking a bit too much, I just need to loosen up,” he says, before explaining how the situation is compounded by Japan’s strict marijuana regulation. Healy smokes “all the time”, he sighs. “I’ve got a tiny little bit, which I got after about six months of negotiation.”
The interview continued through an alternating switchboard of self-doubt and bursts of confidence. One of the singer’s most prominent swaggering proclamations stated that he was both talented and wealthy. “I’m a good artist because I’m still doing it in my 30s, and if you’re still doing the art thing in your 30s, you’re either fucking wadded or good. And I’m both.”
The 1975 at Their Very Best kicks off in Uncasville, Connecticut, on November 3rd and sweeps across the continent into the depths of December before a return leg in the UK in January 2023.
Watch The 1975’s performance of ‘Happiness’ at Reading Festival last weekend below.
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