Notes on a Conditional Form Tracklist
Notes On a Conditional Form is The 1975’s fourth studio album and the second part of Music For Cars era, released on 22 May, 2020. The band moved to LA at the end of July 2018 and had been working on the record before going on tour in early 2019.
The main theme of the album is described as “nighttime in the UK,” as Healy explains in an October 2018 interview with The New York Times the record:
In cars smoking weed, Burial and McDonalds and the M62 and Manchester — just England!
Matty Healy also described the album as a “more intimate, nocturnal and cinematic” record than ABIIOR. During his NME interview, Healy also shared that the album “is very homely, it’s a lot about home, it’s a lot about mental health, it’s a lot about domesticity.”
During a February 2019 interview with Matt Wilkinson on Beats 1, Matty confirmed that the first single for NOACF would be released at midnight, May 31st. He also announced that two more singles would follow, and stated the band had plans to release the album before England’s annual Reading and Leeds Festivals in August 2019. During the release of the album’s first single, “People,” the band announced the album’s first official release date on February 21, 2020.
In a November 2019 interview with The Fader, Healy announced that the release of NOACF would have to be pushed back further in the year:
I’ve realized I can let it happen a bit more naturally than panicking about it. I’m just waiting to let some stuff happen.
In January 2020, an Apple Music listing announced an album release date of April 24, 2020, along with a change in the cover art. However, a change in release date to May 22, 2020, was confirmed in the tracklist announcement on March 30, 2020.
On March 29, 2020, a Reddit user made a comment listing 22 song titles in alphabetical order. Matty then confirmed these leaked titles to be the titles of the NOACF tracks in a different thread. The tracklist was then officially announced on the band’s social media accounts. Alongside this, Matty shared images on Instagram of the official CD, vinyl, and cassette casing, confirming the final cover art.
Matty’s father, Tim, has confirmed on Twitter that he contributed a song of his own written when his son was 11. It was originally called ‘You’, but was renamed by Tim to ‘Don’t Worry’ since ‘You’ already is the title of a different song by The 1975.
On the 19th of May 2020, Notes On A Conditional Form leaked online, three days prior to its release. There has so far been no comment from Jamie Oborne or the band, but the general consensus is that a Target employee in the US took a copy from a warehouse, then distributed it online, due to them already having copies of the album.
“Notes on a Conditional Form” Q&A
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Translations
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Has the band released any promotional content prior to the release?
On July 23rd, 2019, fans received an email confirming Notes On A Conditional Form would be releasing soon, with the first single potentially being called “Wake Up.”
It was later revealed that these lyrics were from “People”, the first official single of the album.
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Is the album a continuation of A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships?
In an October 2019 interview with NME, Matty Healy states the band had no intentions of making Notes On A Conditional Form a continuation of ABIIOR, despite fans' expectations:
I’ve realised it’s never going to be a continuation or an association with A Brief Inquiry. It’s a completely different record. Six months now is the same as what three years was before. Think about the amount of shit that happens in six months’ time. It will be a different thing and a different time.
Matty explains further in an October 2019 interview with Coup De Grace:
I feel like people have been thinking or talking about this process of us making it in a very different way to have we have been actually making it. I’m always going to put out what I think is my best record, but people when they talk about it, I suppose they see it as this big deal – this ‘follow up’ to A Brief Inquiry. Honestly, whether it’s due to time, or just even minutes to get retrospect, we haven’t thought about that shit at all.
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What have the artists said about the album?
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What are three words to describe this album?
Matty Healy explained that he would describe the album with the words ‘end of era’:
I can’t make retrospective statements, that’s why I’ve been filming this documentary for 12 years. Every single time a statement ends, the idea to follow that with a retrospective statement, something that looks back, something that is celebratory of a previous thing. It makes me crawl out of my skin, I hate it. I just want to go forward. This is the only record where I do look back a little bit. I think the only time I specifically do it is in “Guys.” […] And even if it was the fact that, going through the DNA of who we were to make this record—there is so much reference to old emo core or house music that we were growing up with. It felt like we went right back and found the photos of where we came from, that’s how it felt to make this record. When I made this record, I felt like, fuck, this is the last The 1975 record for ages. Not the last record, but this is definitely us stopping making music for a bit.
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How did this record perform on the charts?
Notes on a Conditional Form debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 during the chart week of June 6, 2020 after selling approximately 54,000 album-equivalent copies during its first week. It is the group’s third Top 5 album on the chart.
In their home country, the group debuted at #1 on the Official Albums Chart dated June 4, 2020, after selling approximately 34,000 album-equivalent units in the country. It is the group’s fourth straight chart-topping record.
