Love Me

Album: I Like It When You Sleep... (2015)
Charted: 20 100
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Songfacts®:

  • The first single from The 1975's I Like It When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It album, this premiered as Annie Mac's Hottest Record In The World on October 8, 2015. Speaking to the BBC Radio 1 DJ, the band's frontman Matthew Healy commented regarding the '80s influence on the funky track: "It was a time where pop music wasn't overly encumbered with self-awareness or trying to be too cool," he said. "That's why you got amazing bands like INXS or what Bowie was doing at that time."
  • Lyrically, the song is about narcissism, fame and the band's relationship with their fans. "Everything now is in the pursuit of the truth - so that's what 'Love Me' is about," Healy said.
  • The woozy video parodies rock and roll in the digital age. It was directed by Diane Martel and features the band performing and partying with cardboard cutouts of numerous pop stars including Harry Styles, Rita Ora, Charli XCX, Elvis Presley, Ed Sheeran and a very young Miley Cyrus.

    Matthew Healy explained: "With 'Love Me' we wanted to capture the neon-hued enthralling acquisition of success and excess, the screaming momentum, the sexy daze. Everything is REDICULOUS! But, is it? The only art worth any investment is art that makes one feel personally addressed. A simple truth, or set of truths, that galvanises an awareness and passion within an individual and in doing so immerses the individual into a sense of shared experience and community founded upon that same personal connection or experience.

    Too many artists care what others think. We are for the 'community'! A non-linear observation on everything that has been and what will become. A lack of understanding of the world we are living in. The post-ironic notion of the modern world. Selfie mythologizing. Creating how we consume. Fragments of culture. Not settling for what you're given. WE'VE JUST COME TO REPRESENT A DECLINE IN THE STANDARDS OF WHAT WE ACCEPT."
  • Healy explained the song's meaning to NME: "It was at a time when we were on tour all the time," he said, "and I'm there with my shirt open like messianically giving it to the crowd and I wanted a song that was like 'love me if that's what you wanna do.'"

    "It's about a lack of self-awareness," Healy continued. "If you're offended by that song you have to admit to being un-self-aware - which none of us are - so we're all mates. The way that I dress [our fans] is by giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming they're in on the joke. Of course I'm taking the piss out of myself for allowing myself to get there."
  • Asked by Billboard magazine about the song's '80s rock riffing, Healy replied: "It came from jamming. We're big Talking Heads fans, big Scritti Politti fans, and Japan as well. 'Love Me' was just three years of being on the road and not wanting to soundcheck the same song every night. That riff just happened."

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