I’m so glad that I am able to focus on “Love It If We Made It” by The 1975 for my podcast! As I touched on in my first listen post, this song has a lot to analyze and I’m excited to start digging into it some more. I have been an avid 1975 fan since I was in high school and even met the lead singer Matty Healy after a concert in 2014 (I have picture evidence to prove it!). Its been interesting to see their growth as a band over time and their music evolution, especially with their most recent album, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, released in 2018. I distinctly remember the day this album was released because I was studying abroad at the time and as soon as I got home from class I sat down an listened to the whole album. When listening to Love It If We Made It, I was struck by the opening line (its a real attention grabber) but then I couldn’t quite make out what Matty Healy was saying since most of the lines are strung together with no breaks. My attention was grabbed again when I heard the line “I moved on her like a bitch” because I distinctly recognized it as an infamous Donald Trump quote. At that point I wondered what the song was really about that they would be quoting Trump like that, so I decided to give it a deeper listen and watch the music video, where I was stunned and almost overwhelmed by the message. It is such an uncensored commentary on the state of our world that really makes me start to question how to “make it” in a world that is so messed up.

I think the thesis of the song is that “modernity has failed us”, which is an interesting and confusing concept that I definitely need to be unpack more. The song provides a lot to analyze, but it doesn’t really go into detail about the significance of the social problems and why The 1975 perceive them to be problems, it just lists references, leaving much to be interpreted. I went through the lyrics and video separately and counted at least 30 different references to people, events, and issues that are shown in the lyrics and video clips in the music video. Its very intriguing the way everything is thrown together in practically a laundry list, with not much cohesion between the lines and points being made, but the main idea about the corruption of a society is still clear. In an interview discussing the meaning of the song, Healy says he basically made a list that captured the state of the world from 2016-2018 and would be “adding to it whenever I get really angry”. He also says he wrote the song to address big ideas like “what do you do when truth comes into question?”

Devoting 11 weeks to studying this song doesn’t sound too bad, as I don’t find it particularly annoying (yet). Also, every time I listen to it I am able to recognize something I hadn’t before, and continue building on my experience and interpretation of the song. However, I am worried about how the ambiguity of some of the lines and references will impact my ability to analyze the song. While I have confidently identified a variety of issues, there are still a few lines that confuse me like “poison me daddy” and “the poetry is in the streets”. I know that The 1975 purposefully made the choices they did when writing this song, so these lines are not thrown in there for no reason, it is just figuring out what that reason is that might be difficult. I am also concerned that this song might lead me in too many directions and be difficult to piece together. Each line and each clip seems to be addressing a whole new issue, from consumerism to religion and from Brett Kavanaugh to Kanye West, there is a lot to explore here. However, I also see this as being a potential positive because it is what makes the song so relevant and such a snapshot of the time that we are currently living in. So this might be a challenge, but it is something I am definitely going to work to address to the best of my ability.