"Part Of The Band" is a baroque-pop stream-of-consciousness where Matty Healy touches on:
A youthful crush.
She was part of the Air Force, I was part of the band
I always used to bust into her hand
A boring night at home where he eats a takeaway meal delivered on a moped.
At home, somewhere I don't like
Eating stuff off of motorbikes
And references to his role as a political voice for a generation and his past substance abuse.
Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke?
Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke
Healy kicks off the second verse with a same-sex crush.
And I fell in love with a boy, it was kinda lame
I was Rimbaud and he was Paul Verlaine
In my, my, my imaginationFrench poet Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine had a two-year on-and-off affair in the early 1870s. It ended when a drunken Verlaine fired two shots with a pistol at Rimbaud. Healy is an ally of the LGBT community, and though not specifically gay, has hinted before of past likings for men. On "
Me & You Together Song" he sang:
I'm sorry that I'm kinda queer
It's not as weird as it appears
It's just my body doesn't stop me
Oh it's ok, lots of people think I'm gay"Part of the Band" originated with a song called "New York" that Healy performed live in Los Angeles while supporting Phoebe Bridgers in 2021. "New York," written by Dirty Hit labelmate Benjamin Francis Leftwich, lacked a bridge, so Healy wrote one.
"I love the song and it didn't have a bridge," Healy explained on Reddit. "So when I opened up for Phoebe, I kinda wanted to do that old school Greenwich Village folk scene thing where people used to just play songs that were knocking around by other artists."
The bridge developed into a separate tune co-written by Healy with his usual songwriting collaborator, 1975 drummer George Daniel, and with touring keyboardist Jamie Squire.
Healy and Squire co-produced "Part of the Band" with Jack Antonoff. It's the first time the band has collaborated with Antonoff, who has produced Taylor Swift, Florence + the Machine, and Lorde.
Jack Antonoff and Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast became part of the band, contributing backing vocals. Zauner's contribution came about through Jack Antonoff, whom she met while recording at New York's Electric Lady Studios.
"I was actually feeling kind of insecure that no one had ever asked me to sing on a project," Zauner told
NME. "I guess I have kind of a weird voice, not an objectively 'pretty' one to layer on someone else's. One day Jack texted me: 'Do you like The 1975?' – who are one of my favourite bands. 'How soon can you be at Electric Lady?' I was still in my pyjamas, probably hungover. I took a shower and got on the train."
The folk-rock song draws on string and woodwind instruments, making it unlike any other track The 1975 had released. Originally, it was a rock and roll jam the band didn't deem particularly interesting. As they began to record tunes for their fifth album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, the four-piece perceived its potential.
"When we were in the studio, we'd realized that string arrangements were becoming a big part of the aesthetic of the record," Healy told Apple Music. "And I just thought, 'Why don't we get rid of the macho rockness and get rid of all of the drums and stuff and make something a bit more delicate?' I think I was going through one of my monthly Velvet Underground phases."
The 1975 chose the rebirthed "Part Of The Band" to lead Being Funny in a Foreign Language. "We don't even think about what the biggest tune is. We think, 'If we have to put one of these songs out, what is the song that's the status update we can build on narratively?'" said Healy. "There's a realism to this song that exists across the whole album. I think a lot of the album is about empathy. And empathizing with one another, because I think that I got to a point where I've started to maybe give myself a break a bit more in my life."
Those of you looking for some coherent meaning among the scattergun lyrics are unlikely to find one. "I really just trusted my instinct," Healy told Apple Music. "As a narrative, I don't know what the song is about. It was just this belief that I could talk, and that was OK, and it made sense, and I didn't have to qualify it that much."
