When I was in high school, the student council would put on a talent show every year for any number of talented people to participate in. My sister danced in this talent show, so I was a regular attendee. Once a year, I had to sit through dramatic monologues, school-appropriate stand-up comedy, and bands. All the bands. Half the talent show was bands. My high school never seemed to be in short supply of bands. And all of these bands came to do one thing: Rock hard. The goal of each band was to be louder than the last band on stage. They played loud, and they played mean, driven by their suburban/teenage angst. For the most part, almost every band at my high school played a genre of music I would classify as metal. Some of them proudly called it death metal. One year, a group of three people, apparently fans of this death metal music, started a little three-person mosh pit in front of the stage at Mill Valley High School in Shawnee, Kansas. It was adorable.

I won’t comment on the quality of this metal music, except to say it doesn’t appeal to my personal tastes. However, one thing I noticed about many of these bands, if you payed close enough attention to the thrashing and head banging, is that many of them were actually decent musicians. They played well, they practiced hard, and it payed off in their performances. Dare I say, many of them possessed a very real and well-honed talent. The problem was, I couldn’t appreciate this talent when it was being used to create music I just plain don’t enjoy. On more than one occasion, I remember thinking to myself, “If these guys were just playing simple pop music, I would probably really like them.”

I really wish The 1975 had gone to my high school. They’re a pop band.

This is a struggle as old as the Beatles. Every pop band wants to be taken just as seriously as their rock/folk/soul counterparts. The Beatles grew out their hair and stopped dressing in the same clothes. Madonna released Like a Prayer. Justin Bieber got tattoos. One of the Backstreets Boys did cocaine. But none of those things changed the fact that, at the end of the day, they were and are pop musicians.

Never has this conflict been more accurately parodied than in the music video for a song called “Girls,” by The 1975. At the start of the video, lead singer Matt Healy is pleading with the director, “We’re not a pop band, and it feels like a really ‘pop’ video.” The music kicks in, and suddenly there’s scantily-clad women dancing around with instruments and laying out by the pool. The band is supplemented into these scenes, but they’re not playing along; they’re annoyed. They stand stark still, dressed in black, drab clothing, barely singing along to their own song while beautiful women act out ridiculous scenarios around them. The 1975 want to be taken seriously, but they’re just a pop band.

There wasn’t always this problem with pop music. In fact, there was a time when pop music was taken very seriously. People who made pop music were genuine musicians who wrote and performed their songs, and took pride in their compositions. They took risks and pushed boundaries with pop music. It seems almost impossible to someone who grew up in an era of boy bands that the music industry at one time encouraged, promoted, and sold albums like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Tapestry, or Rumors, the latter of which was the best-selling pop album of the 1970s. By comparison, the best-selling pop album of the 2000s was No Strings Attached by N’Sync.

I’m not trying to knock boy bands. I’m simply trying to illustrate that the changing dynamics of how pop music is marketed and created has made it significantly more difficult for true pop bands to be successful. In the 1990s, the emergence of hip-hop as a dominant cultural force created a reactionary climate where genres became more rigid. Soul and funk music became hip-hop. Hardcore rockers looked to their savior in the form of Kurt Cobain. Country was offered as the outlet to musicians who still wanted to write catchy hooks, spawning successful acts like Garth Brooks and Shania Twain. Meanwhile, the music industry filled the traditional pop void by relying on pop stars who survived the 1980s (Janet Jackson), or simply having a record label create and mold an artist from scratch (Backstreets Boys, N’Sync, Britney Spears). This manufactured nature of music industry politics was obvious, but it worked. Boy bands sold records in droves, Cobain inspired decades worth of alternative radio hits, Britney Spears became the new pop princess of America, and hip-hop became the mainstream voice of black popular culture. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the best pop song of the 90s, “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals, appeared on an album appropriately titled Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too.

This pop music paradox is most evident when examining a mostly forgotten group of the 90s, SoulDecision; a Canadian trio who made waves on MTV’s flagship program Total Request Live, but failed to make an impact on US charts (some listeners might remember a decent song from 1999 called, “Faded,” which peaked at #22 on the Billboard Hot 100). SoulDecision was a pop band, who wrote their songs and played their instruments. They wrote what I believe to be one of the most underrated pop songs of the last two decades. Their problem was, they emerged at the single worst time in history for a pop band. That underrated song, “Ooh It’s Kinda Crazy,” was given the full boy band treatment when it came time for a music video, complete with cool cars and adoring female fans who chase the band around town while the song plays mostly in the background - nothing more than a soundtrack to a ridiculous music video plot. They had genuine talent, but the label did everything they could to push them into a boy band market, where they didn’t belong. They didn’t dress the same; they didn’t perform highly choreographed dances, and they failed.

Enter The 1975…

Things haven’t changed much for pop bands. Pop music is perhaps slightly more respectable than it was at the turn of the century, but there are still those manufactured acts of corporate deception (One Direction was literally assembled during the “bootcamp” stage of the The X Factor). Some have noted a true pop music resurgence with the success of two best-selling artists of recent years, Taylor Swift and Adele, though this is somewhat misleading. Adele, though an immensely talented songwriter and performer, is known more for her vocal prowess. Taylor Swift, much like Shania Twain in the 1990s, is a crossover success who started her career as a country artist. Justin Timberlake is a notable example of someone making great pop music, but he too evolved out of a boy band, and like Adele, is better known as a performer than a bandleader. If there has been any exception to the pop band rule, it has been the success of Maroon 5, though the overwhelming backlash against Adam Levine and his bandmates seems to prove how difficult it is for pop bands to achieve any semblance of respect in the music community. The Urban Dictionary definition of “Maroon 5” literally reads: “Terrible band recording terrible music with terrible music videos with greasy grandmas and the lead singer boning some wriggly chick.”

So, I think you can see what The 1975 are up against.

To be clear, The 1975 are making much better music than Maroon 5, and even if they weren’t, they are far more self-aware. These guys have serious haters, and they know it. If you’d like a quick recap, the clever video for their new single “The Sound” places the band inside a glass box while snooty critics stand outside and silently judge. This scene is continuously intercut with actual quotes from critics of the band. These include things like:

“Unconvincing emo lyrics.”

“This band thinks they have a charasmatic lead singer. They are mistaken.”

“Punch-your-TV obnoxious.”

“Genuinely laughable.”

For the The 1975 to embrace their negative attributes in this way (and laugh about it) is one of the reasons they have been my favorite band of the last few years. The other reason is that they are a pop band playing pop music — insanely catchy, hypnotic, over-the-top, clever, freaking fantastic pop music. They play pop music, and they don’t care what you think about that. They are inspired as much by The Police as they are by the films of John Hughes, and they don’t care what you think about that. Their lead singer prances around like an idiot with his shirt off. He looks exactly, I mean EXACTLY, like the emo kid from South Park. I don’t know if he did that on purpose, but it still comes off as incessantly post-modern .

Not Matt Healy

And post-modernism is what The 1975 are going for. In December, Healy told MTV he believes genres are dead. “They’ve never really mattered,” he said in his thick British accent. “Imagine if you woke up one morning, and you had your record collection, and the concept of genre didn’t exist. The purity of that experience, of listening to music without those rules, is a blissful idea.” That “blissful idea” is what seems to be the primary guiding principle on their second album, titled as long as a scientific research paper, I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it. And if you find that title annoying, again, they really don’t care. They shouldn’t. It’s the best pop album of the last five years. They can call it whatever they want.

From the fame kiss-off funk of “Love Me,” to the reverse gospel of “If I Believe You,” (where Healy, an atheist, wonders if he should try believing in God), to the soft acoustic closer of “She Lays Down,” this is an album that should be experienced. The John Hughes inspiration is still intact, with two film score instrumentals (“Please Be Naked,” and the title track) that are already packaged and ready to go for the next coming-of-age sex scene. Then, on “Loving Someone,” they flip the script, stealing a page from hip-hop while Healy sings/raps about the media pressure to do just that: Have sex — “Who you gonna buy up next; keep hold of their necks, and keep selling them sex.”

The best thing about The 1975’s lyrical confidence is that they can write catchy hooks without walking on eggshells around sensitive subjects. “UGH!” is almost certainly about falling into addiction, but never has the experience sounded so cheerful. Healy sings, “You’re the only thing that’s going on in my mind; taking over my life a second time.” The frustrating thing about the ambition is that it’s difficult to describe in words. The song isn’t quite R&B, but it’s too adult to call it bubblegum pop. It’s minimalist, but with a wall of sound that makes every note snap and groove with crystal clearness.

Another highlight is “She’s American,” an uptempo number with divine 80s guitar licks over a single power chord strum that echoes across the bassline. Healy addresses the American naiveté of a girl attracted to him solely because he’s English: “If she likes it cause we just don’t eat, and we’re so intelligent; she’s American.” Perhaps he likes her too, but even in his most impressionable moments, he tries to control his emotions. “She calls on the phone like the old days, expecting the world,” Healy sings, “Don’t fall in love with the moment; and think you’re in love with the girl.”

If the album has another hero, it’s the lead guitar work of Adam Hann, who takes advantage of solo opportunities without overtaking songs. He shreds like a rock star on “Love Me,” which the theme of the song almost requires, but then rides the rhythm on “UGH!” before improvising more freely on “The Sound.” Altogether, there is a quiet restraint to a lot of the album, which is most prevalent with Hann’s guitar abilities. If nothing else, The 1975 is a tight band that plays with precision, perfecting the layers of each song. It’s the reason Hann takes a step back on a song like “This Must be My Dream” and lets a saxophone solo lead the way. It’s what the songs needs, and it shows four musicians in synergy with one another on their collective sound.

I understand this is all a bold statement. Declaring that a trend in popular music has been interrupted, and a major shift is going to swing pop back to a more complicated/quality approach is silly, and possibly highly miscalculated. But if there is a band with the personality to do it, it would be The 1975. Recently, Matt Healy told NME, “I was about to say the world needs this album … Fuck it, you can go for that. The world needs this album.” Maybe we do, maybe we don’t. But it’s nice to hear someone who isn’t Kanye West speak so confidently about his art.

The best song on I like it when you sleep…(and it’s hard to pick one when nearly every experiment works) is the gorgeous mid-tempo confession of “Somebody Else.” Over layers of ambient synths, drum machine claps, and a thumping bass, Healy ponders the notion of moving on when he can’t control his partner’s next action: “I don’t want your body, I just hate to see you with somebody else.” It’s a song not unlike Prince’s “Little Red Corvette,” still a definitive emo blueprint, building layers on top of subtle crescendos until it explodes into a melodic guitar solo. It’s a stunning, hypnotic moment that truly ranks with the type of songs His Royal Badness himself used to write. It will be almost impossible for another song to be better in 2016, or for that matter, another album to be as good as I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it. It’s good enough for me to type out that whole title again. I bet they did that on purpose. Wily bastards.

Nate Carter