The 1975's Matty Healy updates fans on leaving social media, being "creatively active", and the band's future projects.

Following the eight-year anniversary of The 1975's second EP, 'Sex' (released on November 19th, 2012), the band's frontman Matty Healy has written to fans via Reddit with an update entitled: With love from Matty :) ❤️

Read Matty's open letter to fans below:

Hello to all my darling The 1975 fans!! I do hope you are all well, considering how difficult things have been this year. It’s Matty here. I’ve been daydreaming about playing shows today - and although we definitely needed a break, I can’t tell you how much we miss spending those evenings with you guys.

I think it’s fair to say that we maybe bit off slightly more than we could chew when it came to doing two full albums back to back. I don’t think the records suffered - if anything I think it gave them a strange energy and the last two records happen to be my favourites - but it definitely took its toll on us as individuals. It was wicked tho, beautiful! Like being beaten up by a magical unicorn! We had been either on tour or in the studio for nearly 8 years straight or some shit - and I think that jolt that we ALL felt (globally) back in March as COVID19 impacted all our lives provided us with a moment to reflect on stuff. We’d grown up in public and our entire lives had become literally some big show! WE all kinda took stock of what was really important to us as individuals, like I’m sure you did.

I decided to come off social media - it was obviously in reaction to being thoughtless and getting cancelled initially, but that’s something that had become an almost weekly occurrence. That’s not to trivialise it, it had. If I said anything or acted in a way that genuinely hurt somebody at any time I sincerely apologise for that. I genuinely mean you no harm, whoever you are. The main reason for my leaving social media was  I had the naively simple and very powerful realisation that I spend years and years on the artistic statements that I put out into the world, our records, we all do, the whole band. I will toil the depths and fact check and research and go to extreme lengths to make my creative statements as impenetrable as possible. Hills I am willing to die on. But then I’ll just essentially publish a thought to a billion people without even thinking about it for more than a second on twitter. It’s such a weird paradox. And yeah sometimes I get it right but sometimes I look like a twat and that makes my work worse. I found myself asking myself "for what?” some attention in the moment? A short cut towards feeling good about myself?

I’m a much better person when I am not actively engaged with social media. I’m more present and the people around me whom I love feel more cared for. I’m genuinely a happier person :) Anyway I get weird about this shit cos I don’t wanna come across as self involved / seeking or whatever I just wanna let you guys know wassup. Our fanbase is very active and has been built around social media so I’m not just gonna fuck it off cos it stresses me out. It stresses us ALL out. I just want my engagement within it to have the same purpose and intimacy that I hope many of you experience in my work. I want to use it in a better way.

I don’t know if you guys remember but over last year I posted a couple of things alongside Amnesty International. The reaction you guys gave those posts was CRAZY, like seriously big numbers it was incredible and I am told helped Amnesty immensely. So with my Instagram account I’m going partner with Amnesty International in a slightly more I dunno…..formal or rather consistent way in the future. More on that soon.

I really love you guys, thanks so much for all the love you have shown me at times over this past year. I’ll keep you updated on what’s going on. We are making music with/for/alongside lots of other artists atm - we are very creatively active and we will be spending next year making GHEMBLABMSSLMFIYOYFIM

Xxx

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