‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’ Album Review
Last time The 1975 released an album, I didn’t give too much of a favourable review. To put it bluntly, ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’ was a genre-hopping mess of an album which felt far too overcomplicated and long — ambitious for sure, but perhaps executed the wrong way, being driven by ego. When I caught wind of the band releasing a fifth album, I was scared it would be a repeat of ‘Notes’ where there was zero cohesion with Matty/the band going too far in one direction, not knowing when to say “stop” or “reel it in”. Like every lead album single they’ve released however, ‘Part Of The Band’ showcased a whole different sound and vision for the upcoming The 1975 record. Whisperings of an “orchestral album” floated around the fandom, which ‘Part Of The Band’ helped drive and support. I was all for a stripped back studio effort, but once ‘Happiness’ was released as a single, I felt as if I’d been hoodwinked.
As mentioned in my ‘Part Of The Band’ single review, I noted how the song and video felt as if the band was “doing their best Beatles impression” with their instrument setup and greyscale visual aesthetic. When ‘Happiness’ was released, the video was suddenly in colour and the sound moved to a 70’s funk/disco soundscape — this was mirrored in the accompanying video, from how the band were dressed to the setting of the music video itself. The first two singles gave listeners two totally different genres, but despite ‘Part Of The Band’ showing off a new sound we’d hardly ever heard the band do before, ‘Happiness’ sounded like a hybrid of previous songs. The synths evoked ‘Somebody Else’, the guitar ‘She’s American’ and the sax ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’. One statement Matty said which really stood out to me during this album cycle was how the band went into the studio to basically do an impersonation of themselves — trying to decipher how The 1975 would record a song if you weren’t The 1975 yourself.
This really comes across in the song ‘Happiness’ with it evoking so much of their past, and with Matty commenting on the song by saying “it’s literally us vibing in a room with the mics on — none of the parts work — none of that matters. We were so happy” on his Instagram. Just this one song alone shows The 1975 working together as a band, having fun together, trying to create music in a new way while still cross-referencing their older work. At the final chorus of the song, backing vocals from the rest of the band are clearly heard for the first time, further referencing the call and response of 70’s funk/disco records. When you look at the visual style of the album too, it almost feels like a debut album with the greyscale photo shoots, the band in suits and Matty atop a burnt out car adorning the cover. He explained this being chosen as the album cover as a metaphor to say goodbye to their ‘Music For Cars’ era and to start afresh, a theme and feeling really prominent throughout the album.
Turning to third single ‘I’m In Love With You’, it also carries on this theme of reinvention and self referencing. Its music video is essentially a continuation of their ‘A Change Of Heart’ music video, showing the male clown character growing up and not being afraid of love anymore. The song sounds as though it’s a close relative of ‘It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)’ in terms of instrumentation, another prime example of the band impersonating themselves to create a new song with a new theme — that being love, perhaps the central theme of the album — while managing to sound almost the same as they always have. Toward the end of the song we hear Matty singing “I got it, I found it, I just gotta keep it / Don’t fuck it, you muppet”. This shows he has finally found and entered a relationship he doesn’t want to lose, so he needs to not mess up and throw it all away.
Theorising love being the central theme of the album arose from a Reddit thread I found, where somebody asked what ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’ actually means, with one Redditor commenting “in order to be funny in a different language you have to grasp not only the language itself, but the nuances of that culture. Therefore, someone who can be funny while speaking a different language has mastered both.” To me this reads as Matty finally feeling happy and comfortable after being truly in love, so much so he wrote the crux of their fifth album about this honest love and everything that accompanies it, while shrouding it all in humour and self-acknowledged “dick jokes”.
My personal highlight of the entire album is ‘About You’, this decades version of ‘Robbers’. While performing the song live, Matty acts and positions himself in such a way where imagery from the ‘Robbers’ music video is referenced. ‘About You’ has a similar sound to ‘Part Of The Band’ with several strings being present, but its lyrics call back to a past lover to set their mind at ease. “Do you think I had forgotten about you?” is sung during the chorus, letting the ex know how after all this time he still thinks about the memories and time they made together. The song also features a verse sung by Carly Holt, wife of The 1975 guitarist Adam Hann, acting as the voice of the ex partner who shows she still misses her ex partner too. Not only did Carly’s verse immediately became popular among fans on TikTok, but her verse is my number one moment on the entire album as her vocals sound so ethereal, really standing out among every other track. After all this I really hope Carly releases her own music, because the world needs to hear more of her gorgeous voice and has become a favourite among the fans. I also think this song may have acted as a better closing track to the album over ‘When We Are Together’ because of how hard hitting it is, even though it’s clouded in reverb and sometimes difficult to understand what Matty is saying. Carly’s vocals come across more clear and make the album for me.
Notions of love continue into even more tracks on the album too. ‘All I Need To Hear’ is an atmospheric ballad where Matty sings about loneliness, missing his partner, and just wanting to hear his feelings of love being reciprocated. ‘Oh Caroline’ is a more upbeat track where Matty surrenders himself to a lover he’s been missing, hoping for her to help ease his indecisiveness and promising to “get it right this time” if she comes back to him. ‘When We Are Together’, the albums closing track, is another downbeat ballad with a country twinge, with a sound extremely reminiscent of ‘Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America’ from their last album. The lyrics recount several moments and memories shared with the one he loves, and even though there’s more intimate moments like remembering their “first kiss was in the Walmart toy department” and never being able to escape the smell of scented candles, Matty’s signature humour and commentary is also present with the lines “it was poorly handled, the day we both got cancelled / because I’m a racist and you’re some kind of slag”.
Love between two partners isn’t the only kind of love being explored within the album though, as ‘Wintering’ is a more playful song about driving home for Christmas to spend time with your family and bumping into family friends. A personal highlight in the lyrics for me is “mum’s not a fan of that line about her back / she said it makes her sound frumpy and old / I said, “woman, you are sixty-four years old””; it’s another instance of Matty’s humour and a line begging to be screamed back at the band by fans when performed live. On the opposite end of the spectrum is ‘Looking For Somebody (To Love) however, a ramped up song about school shootings. It’s a continuation of their time in America influencing their writing, with songs like ‘I Like America & America Likes Me’, ‘Roadkill’ and ‘She’s American’ all falling into this same category. In their Spotify storyline, Matty shares how school shootings are “an abstract phenomenon [he doesn’t] understand” that have “reason and cause”, something he’s trying to decipher. With the melding of the title and subject matter, it feels as if he’s saying these events wouldn’t occur if these people were understood and loved.
‘Human Too’ is another ballad evoking songs like ‘I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)’ and ‘I Couldn’t Be More In Love’, where Matty offers a vulnerable look inside his mind. He gives out apologies for controversies and actions, says he’s been through different emotions, but tells us it’s these different feelings and mistakes which make us human. At the end of the chorus he sings “tell me you’re a human”, which can be read two ways: begging for reassurance, acceptance and understanding from his audience or from the people he loves, such as his family or a partner. This theme of apologising for previous actions can also be found in the opening song ‘The 1975’, their fifth iteration of the track and a major departure from previous versions. It too has a similar sound to ‘Part Of The Band’ while lyrically coming a cross as more grown up and mature in relation to previous, earlier versions. There’s a repeated line of “I’m sorry if you’re living and you’re seventeen” repeated throughout, giving some empathy to the audience also found in ‘Human Too’. The released version of ‘The 1975’ on this album has a completely different sound to the demo shared after the album was released, with many fans calling for the full demo to see a proper release, with some preferring it over the studio version. To me the demo sits somewhere in the same ballpark as the sonic atmosphere on ‘A Brief Inquiry’; the lyrics “feelin’ apathetic after scrolling through hell / think I’ve got a boner but I can’t really tell” often get stuck in my head and, again, demonstrate Matty’s humorous side as a lyricist.
Accompanying Matty’s Rolling Stone interview was the tag line “Can true love exist anymore? The 1975’s Matty isn’t so sure”, an interesting sentiment considering just how much of ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’ is centred around love of different kinds: relationships, familial, absent love and learning to love yourself. While the album explores all these facets, it feels as though there isn’t a concrete answer to the notion of true love existing, but the fact so much of the album is centred around love should say a lot in itself. Maybe true love is real, but everlasting love isn’t? Perhaps the closest thing to everlasting love is the family, as explored in ‘Wintering’, and the bandmates who perfectly captured an impersonation of themselves to flesh out and accompany Matty’s loved-up lyrical musings. With ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’, The 1975 have been able to explore the idea of love in so many ways while simultaneously shedding their previous musical and aesthetic skin to create what looks and feels like a rebirth. This could easily be their debut album, and would be an incredibly strong one at that. Thematically it’s incredibly cohesive and avoids jumping around too much with genres, a vast improvement on ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’. It’s as though The 1975 learned how to be themselves again, Matty was able to mature and love, and in the process they all mastered the art of being funny in a foreign language.
If you liked this review, which I hope you did, you can read more of my The 1975 reviews here: ‘People’ Review & Analysis / The 1975 Live At The O2 / Initial Thoughts: ‘Notes On A Conditional Form’ / The 1975 Are Back / ‘At Their Very Best’ Concert Review
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