If you’ve known me last year, you probably would’ve gotten a whiff (at the very least) of my intense band crushing on The 1975.
The details of the first time I’ve listened to them are kinda sketchy, but I do know that the first time I’ve talked to them to someone was on my birthday (I have the tweet to prove it). The weeks after that, I’ve listened to their EPs and did all the possible thing a fan could do with the internet: liked their Facebook page, listened to their EPs, googled them, read about them on Wikipedia, drooled on their stylized black and white photos, felt bad about not visiting places thanks to said photos, visited their website, had a lot of trouble reading the lyrics from their website because // I T W A S W R I T T E N T H I S W A Y T H E W H O L E T I M E S O T H A N K S F O R T H A T //, giggled at their photos, posted photos of them on my Instagram account to reiterate that I like them, tweeted lines from their songs, dump links of their songs to my friends, blog about them, talk about them, freak out in a bar when they played “Chocolate” and I’m the only one there who recognized the track (and maybe the guy who put that song on the playlist?), play the magical air guitar and air drums while listening to their songs, developed a crush on their drummer, and also annoy myself the whole time that I was doing all of this.
Towards the end of the year, my aggressive fangirling reached its plateau. I’ve possibly done all things related to the act of fangirling from afar (with my available time of course, I could imagine doing more if I wasn’t fully employed heh) – until the New Year came and someone announced that they’re coming to Manila.
Naturally, when the news broke, I shared the announcement in all caps, emojis, multiple exclamation points and enthusiasm. There was no way that I was gonna let this pass, because just thinking about staying at home while they’re out there is enough to make mad. My friends knew that it was a no-brainer for me to go because OF COURSE I HAVE TO GO.
But to be honest, after seeing videos of The 1975 playing live from last year, I had some reservations. Some bands are just better on the record – let’s be real about that – and at the time, it appeared to me that they were one of those. So when I found out about the band coming, I had that bit of hesitation – not for me – but for everyone else who’d catch them. I was afraid that they wouldn’t be able to recognize how good their songs were, and how amazing these boys are just because they couldn’t let that come through live.
But when I saw the group that Saturday night – and this is not the fangirly girl in me talking – they seriously sounded good. So for that, I felt relief and pride for sticking out with my (obsession) appreciation for these guys. The energy on the stage was good: they were very playful and nice to the audience, and – we could blame the amount of teenagers in the audience – it felt like one crazy fanatic show (George even said that there’s “so much love here it’s crazy”).
The boys were enjoying the attention and the screams and the Filipino’s way of beating the artist by out-singing them. I couldn’t even hear Matty at times because the whole mall was singing (you can hear it on the video below – which I would like to clarify, none of those singing and screaming came from my mouth. I have been out-fangirled too). It was that crazy.
I also didn’t expect that there would be so much people who’d know about them here (given that I don’t listen to local radio now and I don’t know, I’m just not around teenagers much haha), but everything that happened that day proved me wrong.
I may have been less of a fan than I thought I was to even doubt them, but hey, I’ve fully converted now.
Dawn Lanuza 