It’s been reported that The 1975 are currently working on a new album. It’ll be their sixth, the follow up to 2022’s Being Funny In A Foreign Language.
The band are playing just one show this year and it’s arguably their biggest ever. They headline Glastonbury at the end of next month, alongside Neil Young and Olivia Rodrigo
The news about the new album came via their manager, Dirty Hit label boss Jamie Oborne, who told the Money Trench podcast: “It’s such a big gig, and it’s the only show that we’re playing this year. (Frontman Matty Healy) thought doing it in isolation would be a really powerful thing. I obviously agreed with him, as I often do.”
Oborne added: “They’re making a record at the moment. I don’t know when it will come out, but they’re making one.” He went on to describe it as “pretty extraordinary”.
“I think they’ve earned the right to take their time,” he continued. “The world’s gonna be listening, so it needs to be right.”
It’ll be the first album since the band made headlines around the world in 2023 when they were banned from Malaysia for breaking the country’s strict anti-LGTBQ laws. Healy and bass player Ross McDonald kissed onstage (deliberately, of course) during their set at the Good Vibes festival, which led to the festival’s premature closure, and global infamy for the band, who were criticised as much for the incident as they were celebrated.
Talking about that episode, Oborne said: “It was a very stressful time. I’m actually now suing the Malaysian promoter in Malaysia, but the press only really reported the salacious side of it, not what subsequently has been found by a High Court judge, that actually, the Malaysian promoter broke contract, and that’s why we have contracts.”
And he ruled out the possibility of the band ever trying to get back in to that country. “There’s such a catalogue of human rights infringements in Malaysia that I don’t think there’s an amount of money that you could pay Matty for him to want to go there.”
