The Meaning Behind “About You” by The 1975 and Matty Healy’s Romantic Despair

“About You” appears on The 1975’s fifth studio album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language. Working with star producer Jack Antonoff, the band’s dream pop song finds frontman Matty Healy hopelessly in love and, because of it, endlessly in despair.

I Need To Remember Your Face

With his voice buried in a cavernous reverb, Healy sings an earnest love song that musically recalls the pop gospel of U2’s “With Or Without You”.

I know a place,
It’s somewhere I go when I need to remember your face.
We get married in our heads,
Something to do while we try to recall how we met.

The reverb makes it feel like he’s being beamed in from another dimension. Like some lost lover from another time or another chapter in this person’s life.

Do you think I have forgotten about you?

There’s always a kind of desperation in a romance. And Healy pleads with the girl to hold on to whatever brought them together in the first place. But if they need to find their way back, then there must have been enough friction between the two to separate them.

You and I (Don’t let go).
We’re alive (Don’t let go).
With nothing to do, I could lay and just look in your eyes.
Wait (Don’t let go).
And pretend (Don’t let go).
Hold on and hope that we’ll find our way back in the end.

I’ll Miss You in the Morning

Warren Ellis, the longtime Nick Cave collaborator, Bad Seed, and member of The Dirty Three, arranged the strings, which gives the recording a sense of unsteadiness. It brings to mind how dizzying a romance can be. Especially one that teeters and eventually falls apart.

Co-written by Healy and bandmate George Daniel, the song also features Carly Holt, who is married to the band’s guitarist, Adam Hann. Holt’s contribution, along with the track’s hazy production, recalls the wistful epics of shoegaze pioneers, Cocteau Twins.

And there was something about you that now I can’t remember,
It’s the same damn thing that made my heart surrender.
And I’ll miss you on a train, I’ll miss you in the morning,
I never know what to think about.

Still, amid the track’s dense layers, one thing is clear: Healy hasn’t forgotten about the girl.

Photo by Jim Dyson/Redferns