Love It If We Made It

Album: A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (2018)
Charted: 33
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Packed with pop culture references and political jabs, this hard-charging song finds Matt Healy looking outward at society's failings.

    Truth is only hearsay!
    We're just left to decay!
    Modernity has failed us


    This is a reference to the "fake news" phenomenon, which concerns deliberate lies and false information spread by various media conglomerates and governments with the intention to mislead. The term was popularized by Donald Trump, who has used the phrase to describe negative press coverage about him.
    Healy is expressing his frustration about the erosion of truth in the modern world.
  • Healy's smorgasbord of lyrics also references sex in a car, drug addiction, racism, Kanye West and the late rapper Lil Peep. Speaking to Beats 1's Zane Lowe about the song, The 1975 vocalist said: "It's me looking out. It's an interesting one cos there's not a lot of context and a lot of the things I say in that are direct quotes from people or they're headlines that I've read."

    He added: "It's not about being political, or making people believe what I believe. But if I'm going to make observations about the world - the world is a very scary, daunting place, but look at things happening. And I think that you need to be brave because if you're going to say things you're always going to upset people. It's very objective though, this song."
  • This is a protest song comprised entirely of images and soundbites of the modern world. "I wanted it to be loud and outward but objective, and you can't really call me out on anything in it," Matty Healy told NME. "But I couldn't get that song played on the radio because there are two words in it that are too raw for radio. One of them was a direct quote from the sitting President of the United States: 'I moved on her like a bitch.'"

    "We've heard the President say that, we know this," the 1975 frontman added. "This happened. I'm not saying that the police are inherently racist. I'm saying that this happened. So we can talk about the American prison system being a business, whether you're for or against it, but it is. And if you scream that, it's alarming. Why is it alarming? Maybe because it's not a good idea. You can't scream 'Creme Egg!' and provoke a reaction, but you can scream the truth and it'll maybe reveal a bit more."
  • Matt Healy discussed the song's meaning in a video with Genius, explaining the lyrics cover everything from the death of Lil' Peep and the refugee crisis in the Middle East to sexual assault accusations against Donald Trump.

    "It's the gem of hope amongst all of the rubble," he said. "I didn't want to do a protest song. I wanted to be introspective but not so much like my diary."
  • Asked by Pitchfork how he came to write the song, Matt Healy explained that for a year after the release of 1975's previous album, I Like It When You Sleep, he got his record label product manager Ed Blow to daily pass onto him the tabloid newspapers.

    Every time a tabloid headline really touched Healy he tried to incorporate it into the song. "And then I had loads of stuff, and I had to make it all rhyme," the 1975 singer added. "That was the most difficult bit."
  • This won Best Contemporary Song at the 2019 Ivor Novello Awards. The judges described it as as "a bold, inspirational and original statement, bringing together an awareness of contemporary issues without resorting to cliché." The 1975 also won Songwriters of the year at the same ceremony.
  • "Love It If We Made It" is based on The Blue Nile's 1989 song "The Downtown Lights."

    "I wanted to reference that song... I wanted it to be f—-ing obvious to people that know," Healy told Entertainment Weekly. "That's one of the things that's good about the 1975. I feel like we reference nostalgic ideas a lot, but we rarely get into pastiche. I think when I do a reference, we do it so obviously so it's not like I'm pretending I don't know."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

The Evolution of "Ophelia"

The Evolution of "Ophelia"Song Writing

How five songs portray Shakespeare's character Ophelia.

N.W.A vs. the World

N.W.A vs. the WorldSong Writing

How the American gangsta rappers made history by getting banned in the UK.

Little Richard

Little RichardFact or Fiction

Was Long Tall Sally a cross-dresser? Did he really set his piano on fire? See if you know the real stories about one of rock's greatest innovators.

Steven Tyler of Aerosmith

Steven Tyler of AerosmithSongwriter Interviews

Tyler talks about his true love: songwriting. How he identifies the beauty in a melody and turns sorrow into art.

Tanita Tikaram

Tanita TikaramSongwriter Interviews

When she released her first album in 1988, Tanita became a UK singing sensation at age 19. She talks about her darkly sensual voice and quirky songwriting style.

Black Sabbath

Black SabbathFact or Fiction

Dwarfs on stage with an oversize Stonehenge set? Dabbling in Satanism? Find out which Spinal Tap-moments were true for Black Sabbath.