If Taylor Swift fans were significantly surprised that her latest studio album — the sprawling Tortured Poets Department — lingered heavily on her relationship with Matty Healy, they might be just as taken aback as his own fanbase to know that he doesn’t plan to mirror her narrative on the 1975‘s next album.
During a recent appearance on the Doomscroll podcast, Healy reflected briefly on his relationship with Swift in 2023, which stretched back years longer than most of the public were likely aware. “Last year, I became a way more well-known public figure for loads of different reasons,” he said. “And the only reason [that] I was interested in was kind of what I was doing. I think that a lot of artists, they become very interested in their lore. Or they become interested in the things that have happened outside of their art that people know about, and they want to address that. And fair enough.”
Healy explained that he operated with a similar thought process during the making of the 1975‘s self-titled debut, which was released in 2013. He described the record as “a series of journal entries,” with emphasis on the details of particular heartbreaks and personal experiences. “I would kind of just be lying if I made a record about, I don’t know, all the stuff that was said about me or my casual romantic liaisons or whatever it may be that I’ve kind of become known for, just because I was famous,” he added.
“I’m just not interested in that kind of stuff. It doesn’t make interesting work. And I think that if everyone else’s work is going to be about that, I’d rather stick to what I’m good at, which is maybe being a kind of outsider,” he said later in the episode. “I’m not interested in being provocative or contrarian at all. I find it kind of tired and quite old-fashioned … I don’t want to make work with an audience in mind. I want to have my work exist outside of a lot of contemporary music that is very interested in short-term gains — whether that be getting attention, whether that be getting credit. I’m really suspicious of those ideas.”
Around the same time that he went public with Swift, Healy was under fire for remarks made about the rapper Ice Spice during a podcast appearance. Later that year, he was blamed — and later sued — for the cancellation of a music festival in Malaysia after criticizing the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws before kissing bassist Ross MacDonald. But it was his connection to Swift that put the brightest spotlight on him. He was spotted at the Eras tour on multiple occasions — at times taking the stage with opener Phoebe Bridgers — and was watched like a hawk for his reactions to TTPD.
“I think that that’s an obvious thing to draw from. And I’m just not interested in it. And I think, like, the maintenance of the status quo is something that I always fight against,” Healy said, speaking more generally about the time he spent at that level of fame. “The idea of making a record about something that personally happened to me, that by the time I put it out is gonna be like two years old, I see people doing that as well, and it’s not interesting.”
For a brief stretch in the late 2010s and early 2020s, the 1975’s albums leaned heavily into social commentary and reflections on addiction. Their 2022 album Being Funny in a Foreign Language found a balance between those observations and more romantic-leaning pop songs, like “About You” and “I’m in Love With You.” And even those records didn’t arrive without dissection of who they could be about. Earlier this year, Healy became engaged to the model Gabbriette Bechtel.
“My works is, I hope, interesting art pop that provokes, that maybe helps popularize academic subjects that I’m really interested in,” Healy said. “I don’t have a blueprint to make a record that people want to hear. The only thing I’ve ever done is just be like, make something you’re really interested in. That’s what I’m doing. We’re as interested in the culture war as we are interested in some kind of niche, archaic economic model that we’ve read about.”