Matty Healy interview: 'Art, sex, drugs, religion. It’s just about losing yourself'

On the floor of a North London studio, as those around him pack away, Matty Healy is not yet ready to go home. Equipment is being dismantled and crew members have left. At 7pm, the lead singer of one of Britain’s biggest bands is still working. Painting the canvas that we’ve asked him to design for the cover of GQ Hype, GQ’s new digital weekly, which he titles, "There Used To Be A Rave Here". “I don’t know why I’ve called it that, but I think it’s because I’ve spent a lot of time in Manchester recently and I’ve found myself walking around saying that all the time. ‘There used to be a rave there. Now it’s a Pret,’” the singer explains.

We asked Healy to design the Hype cover, because, well, who wouldn’t? This is the year of The 1975. The paint? It felt like Healy’s world. Although he’s never publicly exhibited that side to him, his love of art, it turns out, is incredibly broad.

So broad that a conversation initially about his painting turns to sex, drugs and religion surprisingly quickly. Keeping busy has been a necessity for Healy, who went to rehab in December 2017. “I have so much shit, like insecurity and anxiety. You know, everyone’s so flawed... Art is a place where you don’t have to worry about those kinds of things and I think that [art is] so important to me, because it’s my only option left, really, in regards to the desire to lose one’s self. Like, what have we got? Art, sex, drugs, religion.”

He starts to tick them off, “Sex, drugs, done all of them, that’s not a path to salvation. Not that I don’t have a good sex life, not that we need to get personal about it, but art, drugs, sex, religion... Religion, unfortunately, [is] not an option, especially if you live in England. They’re all just forms of losing yourself and I think I see that at shows, kids having that moment of freedom. That’s one of the only times I feel really free, when I’m on stage, not because people are looking at me, but because I’m fulfilling my purpose.” He adds, “I’ve learned more from artists who signpost toward utopian ideals as opposed to politicians and leaders that actually try and create them and fuck them up. Artists have taught me way more than anyone else really.”

Through The 1975, Healy has become the poster boy for overthinkers. Their latest album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, released in November, steamrolls through the modern age like an overzealous Tweeter. Take “Love It If We Made It” – a Fox News-style whirlwind that jumps from heroin references to direct quotes from Donald Trump (“I moved on her like a bitch / Excited to be indicted”) in minutes.

The Manchester four-piece, who call themselves the biggest band you’ve never heard of, formed when Healy was 13, in 2001, at Wilmslow High School and waited eleven years to release their debut album (The 1975), which received mixed reviews. Then came their breakthrough, their second album, in 2016, I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It, which went platinum, rocketing them to greater, more popular heights (selling out London’s O2 in three hours and then Madison Square Garden). It was a record bursting with confidence. It was wry, self-aware and loaded with charisma and fun. Decadent emo lyrics and peacockish references were punctuated by a sharp sense of humour.

"I’ve never been interested in masculinity as an idea because I’ve never been fearful of it"

In Healy's company, you notice how often he speaks in the style of his lyrics – with emphasis and force about weighty issues, at pace, openly, often changing his mind or challenging an issue, trying to nail down the other side of the argument before it’s even asked. At times, punctuating topics with humour when they become very heavy. ("God, I sounded well intense and probably a bit miserable,” he says after an in-depth discussion on how happiness is overrated.)

In just under an hour, the topic switches from albums – specifically the next one they’re releasing before August, Notes On A Conditional Form. “We’re at a time now when people enjoy that level of emotional investment, as long as it’s rewarding. And I make albums. I don’t make singles. So I’ve just got to make another album. Also, to feel like I have a purpose, because otherwise what the fuck am I doing?” To social media, “Awful stuff happens and great stuff happens every second and we wake up in the morning and tune in to this algorithm that keeps us informed on every single bit of chaos that happens until we go to bed.”

The only thing he doesn’t seem entirely confident talking about is masculinity and what’s changing for men. “Of course, masculinity’s changed, but maybe I’m fortunate or privileged to have not been that interested in it. I did get slapped about a bit in Manchester for having long hair and looking like a poofta when I was a teenager, but who didn’t get stuff for being slightly different? It’s like I’ve never been interested in masculinity as an idea because I’ve never been fearful of it.” He says, “Maybe it’s the duality of my dad being a working-class welder who graduated into being an actor and a more bohemian character. He was a working-class lad. I was witness to the masculinity and that role model in my life, but all his mates were gay and liberal and of colour. I’m lucky to have never really been a witness to that much prejudice.” He stops himself several times. “Sorry. Maybe I digress. I don’t know that much about masculinity and its traditions because I’m not that involved in it.” He adds, more confidently, “I don’t know. Who cares? Do we really care that much?” He stops himself again, almost agonisingly trying to pin down an answer, “But it seems that people do. This is what I mean. I’m sometimes a bit like, 'Who cares?' Then I realise loads of people care.”

There’s not really another band who seem to understand the teenage psyche as well as The 1975. Even more so when Healy describes his upcoming Reading and Leeds headline show. “It’ll be huge and it’ll be me and it’ll be a big art installation, but it won’t be slick from me. It’ll be a 16-year-old’s, whose mind has been blown.”

Before that, the Brits this week sees them nominated twice for Best British Group (which they won in 2017) and British Album Of The Year for A Brief Inquiry. “I started my band when I was 13 years old. We were a real band. Not one person in that room from the industry, apart from Susie, my mate, has been in our studio or had anything to do with the creation of our records. So to be rewarded in such a commercial environment for something that’s so anathema to those ideas is actually really quite humbling.” He adds, “Maybe I’ll say that. Or just say, ‘Fuck off’ – take my shirt off or something.”

Healy’s next milestone is in April, when he turns 30. He’ll be celebrating in LA as it times with their Coachella performance. The list of things he’s most looking forward to about his thirties range from more records – working on other people’s records and making soundtracks – to having a baby and getting some farm animals.

“I feel very representative of where I am artistically. A Brief Inquiry, I felt, was a good record to make at the age I am. It doesn’t feel like a naive record and it doesn’t sound like a crusty record.” He adds, “So, I’m feeling myself at 30.”

The Brits take place Wednesday 20th Feburary at 8pm. A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is out now.

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