The 1975 returned yesterday with “Part of the Band,” the first single off their upcoming album Being Funny In a Foreign Language. Filled with the usual plethora of quotable lines from lead singer Matty Healy, the song went straight to No. 2 on the Genius Top Songs chart, where it—like so many other new tunes this summer—failed to unseat Kate Bush.
In a Reddit comment, Healy revealed that “Part of the Band” grew out of a bridge he wrote for “New York,” a song by Benjamin Francis Leftwich that Healy performed while opening for Phoebe Bridgers in 2021. Healy and bandmate George Daniel wrote and produced “Part of the Band” with hitmaker Jack Antonoff, and the trio opted for an orchestral-pop sound that occasionally segues into laidback folk-rock. But the focus is always Healy’s lyrics.
The song opens with Healy reflecting on a youthful infatuation.
She was part of the Air Force, I was part of the band
I always used to bust into her hand
In my, my, my imagination
He then gives us a timeframe for these fantasies. They date back to when he was a youngster, before he got into drugs or started saying controversial things.
I was living my best life, living with my parents
Way before the paying penance and verbal propellants
And
my, my, my cancellation, hm, yeah
Healy then seemingly looks back on a same-sex crush, evoking the French poets Arthur Rimbaurd and Paul Verlaine, who famously had what the BBC describes as an “intense but ultimately violent affair.” (Healy has said he’s attracted to men—but “not in a carnal, sexual way.”)
And I fell in love with a boy, it was kinda lame
I was Rimbaud and he was Paul Verlaine
In my, my, my imagination
In the pre-chorus, Healy adopts an Elvis accent while chiding himself for being so self-involved.
Enough about me now
“You gotta talk about the people, baby”
But that’s kind of the idea
It’s unclear what Healy’s talking about in the first chorus. But he apparently gets some help from an uncredited Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast, who tweeted about her involvement with the track.
At home, somewhere I don’t like
Eating stuff off of motorbikes
Coming to her lookalikes
Healy jumps into the present in the third verse with some stream-of-conscious cracks about intellectual hipster-types.
I know some Vaccinista tote bag chic baristas
Sitting in east on their communista keisters
Writing about their ejaculations
In the funniest line of the song, Healy quotes these Marxist java lovers talking about their ideal partners.
“I like my men like I like my coffee
Full of soy milk and so sweet, it won’t offend anybody
whilst staining the pages of The Nation,” oh, yeah
The second time through the chorus, Healy comments on the general toxicity of digital culture.
The worst inside of us begets
That feeling on the internet
It’s like someone intended it
In the outro, Healy again pokes fun at himself and wonders whether he’s above any of the annoyances he’s described.
Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke?
Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke
Calling his ego imagination?
In the music video for “Part of the Band,” the band performs in a grassy field alongside string and horn players. There are also dogs, schoolchildren, burned-out cars, and businessmen splashing water in their faces from a puddle. Being Funny In a Foreign Language is due out October 14.
You can read all the lyrics to “Part of the Band” on Genius now.
