Following their electrifying headline set at this year's Glastonbury Festival, I’ve put together my Top 10 songs by The 1975 — a band that continues to redefine pop-rock with each release.
One of The 1975’s most underrated songs, this track hails from one of their strongest albums and wears its ‘80s influences proudly all shimmering synths, smooth production, and that signature caramel sax solo that feels pulled from a dream. Yet despite its nostalgic palette, nothing about it feels recycled. It’s pure The 1975: emotionally raw, musically sophisticated, and endlessly replayable.
Lyrically, it's classic Matty Healy witty, wounded, and self-aware. He meets a girl who might “rearrange my world,” only to watch it all unravel. “I thought it wasn’t love,” he sighs, the realisation arriving too late. The gut-punch comes soon after: “You got excited and now you find your girl / Won’t get you undressed or care about your beating chest.” It’s that jarring mix of blunt honesty and poetic sadness that hits hardest — the kind of line that sticks in your throat for hours after.
A sparkling melody lifts the heartbreak to despondent new heights, with the saxophone not just adding a touch of flair but transforming the track into something cinematic. It’s not just a breakup song it’s a mood, a moment, a slow-motion memory.
That’s the tension that makes this track so quietly powerful: the juxtaposition of upbeat, almost danceable production with quietly devastating lyrics. The band leans into the gloss of '80s pop not for novelty, but as a tool for emotional storytelling. Matty’s vocals are full of restraint he’s not belting out his pain; he’s sitting in it, letting it simmer just beneath the surface.
By the time The 1975 released 'Being Funny in a Foreign Language', they had already weathered their most eclectic and at times divisive release, 'Notes on a Conditional Form'. That record, sprawling and restless, was the sound of a band testing the outer limits of their identity. Add a global pandemic into the mix, and it’s no surprise their next chapter felt like a recalibration.
'Being Funny in a Foreign Language' isn’t just a tighter album; it’s emotionally sharper, sonically warmer, and more focused in its purpose. The band distilled their strengths into something leaner and more immediate, without losing the ambition or self-awareness that defines their work. And right at the heart of it sits 'Happiness' a euphoric, sparkling pop song that captures The 1975 in full technicolour.
From the opening groove, 'Happiness' bursts with movement. The rhythm section is elastic, the guitars chime and shimmer, and there’s a playfulness in Matty Healy’s delivery that feels both joyful and desperate like someone dancing while the floor gives way beneath them. Lyrically, he’s chasing connection, pleasure, and distraction in equal measure: “I’m happiest when I’m doing something that I know is good for me,” he sings, though you can sense the doubt hanging just behind the statement.
It’s that tension that makes the song so compelling. On the surface, it’s one of the band’s most accessible tracks catchy, upbeat, polished but underneath, it’s still wrestling with the same existential threads that have always run through their music. Desire, self-sabotage, emotional distance, fleeting joy all wrapped up in a chorus you’ll be humming for days.