Matty Healy is a lot of things. Depending on who you ask, he’s a visionary, a provocateur, or just the guy who eats raw meat on stage for "art." But back in 2018, when The 1975 dropped Love It If We Made It, they weren't just making another synth-pop track. They were building a time capsule. It’s a frantic, breathless, terrifyingly accurate scream into the void of the late 2010s.
Honestly, it shouldn't work.
The song is basically a rhythmic list of headlines. It’s a lyrical collage. It takes the most horrific, absurd, and mundane parts of our digital existence and shoves them into a four-minute pop song that somehow makes you want to dance and cry at the same time. While most artists were trying to escape the chaos of the 24-hour news cycle, The 1975 decided to dive headfirst into the dumpster fire.
The Chaos Behind the Lyrics
If you listen to the track without context, it sounds like a fever dream. But every single line is tethered to a real, often grim, reality.
Take the opening. "We're f***ing in a car, shooting heroin." It’s blunt. It’s an immediate nod to the opioid crisis, but also to the desperate search for intimacy in a world that feels like it’s ending. Then you get the line about "The 1975" (the year, not the band) and the reference to "A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships." The song isn't just a track; it's the centerpiece of an era where we all realized the internet wasn't the utopia we were promised.
One of the most jarring moments is the direct quote from a certain former President. "I moved on her like a b*tch!" Matty yells it. It’s not subtle. By taking these literal transcripts of modern history—from the death of Aylan Kurdi (the Syrian toddler found on a Turkish beach) to the kneeling of Lil Peep—the band forced the listener to confront the cognitive dissonance of being alive right now.
How do we process a celebrity death in the same thumb-swipe as a global refugee crisis? We don't. We just keep scrolling. Love It If We Made It captures that specific, modern vertigo better than almost any other piece of media.
👉 See also: Album Hopes and Fears: Why We Obsess Over Music That Doesn't Exist Yet
Why the Production Matters (It’s Not Just About the Words)
The music itself is a massive tribute to The Blue Nile’s "The Downtown Lights." If you haven't heard that 1989 classic, go listen to it. The 1975 didn't just borrow the vibe; they practically inhaled the atmosphere of it. But where The Blue Nile is romantic and nocturnal, Love It If We Made It is industrial and urgent.
The drums are relentless. George Daniel, the band's drummer and primary producer alongside Healy, opted for this driving, four-on-the-floor beat that feels like a heartbeat during a panic attack. There’s no room to breathe. The synths are bright, almost too bright, like the blue light of a smartphone screen hitting your eyes at 3:00 AM.
It’s interesting because the song follows a very traditional pop structure, but the content is so experimental. It’s a Trojan horse. You get the hook stuck in your head, and then you realize you’re humming along to lyrics about systemic racism and environmental collapse.
A Note on the "Modernity Has Failed Me" Concept
The refrain "Modernity has failed me" wasn't just a catchy line for a t-shirt. It was the thesis statement for the entire Music for Cars era.
For a long time, we believed technology would save us. We thought total connectivity would lead to total empathy. Instead, it led to echo chambers, radicalization, and a weirdly hollow sense of loneliness. When Matty sings "And I'd love it if we made it," it’s not a confident proclamation. It’s a plea. It’s the "if" that does the heavy lifting there. There’s a genuine sense of doubt.
The Cultural Impact and the Controversies
You can't talk about this song without talking about how it cemented The 1975 as the "important" band of their generation—for better or worse. Critics at Pitchfork and NME scrambled to name it the song of the year (and eventually the song of the decade). It felt like the first time a band had successfully "solved" how to write about the internet without sounding like a "phone bad, book good" boomer meme.
✨ Don't miss: The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads: Why This Live Album Still Beats the Studio Records
But it also invited scrutiny.
When Matty Healy tweeted the song in the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020, he faced massive backlash. People felt he was using a tragedy to promote his own music. He eventually deactivated his Twitter. This moment actually adds another layer to the song’s legacy. It highlights the very thing the song warns about: the difficulty of navigating performance and sincerity in a digital space. Even when you have a song that explicitly critiques systemic injustice, the act of sharing it can be seen as an act of ego. It’s a loop. A weird, messy, human loop.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Meaning
A common misconception is that Love It If We Made It is a nihilistic song. It’s really not.
If it were nihilistic, there wouldn't be that massive, soaring explosion of sound in the final chorus. There wouldn't be the "I'd love it" part. The song is actually deeply optimistic, but it’s an optimism that has been dragged through the mud. It’s what happens when you look at the worst parts of humanity and still decide that surviving is a goal worth having.
It’s about the resilience of the human spirit in the face of an algorithmic nightmare.
- The "Kanye" Line: "Thank you, Kanye, very cool!" This wasn't a random jab. It was a direct reference to a tweet from Donald Trump. By weaving these pop-culture-political crossovers into the lyrics, the band showed how blurred the lines between entertainment and governance had become.
- The Religion Factor: "Jesus save us! Modernity has failed me." Matty has always been a vocal atheist, but he frequently uses religious imagery to describe the "void" left behind by secularism. In this song, he’s pointing out that we’ve replaced traditional gods with new, digital ones—and they aren't doing a very good job of looking after us.
How to Actually Listen to the Track Today
Listening to it in 2026 is a different experience than it was in 2018. Some of the references feel like ancient history, while others feel more relevant than ever. The "poison me, daddy" line still feels like a biting commentary on our strange relationship with consumerism and online subcultures.
🔗 Read more: Wrong Address: Why This Nigerian Drama Is Still Sparking Conversations
If you want to get the most out of it, don't just put it on as background music.
Sit with the lyrics. Look up the references you don't recognize. There’s a whole rabbit hole involving the "Death of a Sea Bird" and the "Fossil Fuels" lines that tie back to specific environmental reports from that time. The song is dense. It’s a textbook on how to write protest music in an age where nobody has an attention span.
Actionable Takeaways for the Curious Listener
If you’re a fan of the song or just discovering it, here’s how to dive deeper into the world it created:
- Watch the Music Video: It’s a visual representation of the lyrical collage. It uses silhouettes and rapid-fire imagery that mimics the feeling of scrolling through a social media feed. It’s essential viewing to understand the "sensory overload" intent.
- Compare it to "The Sound": Listen to "The Sound" from their previous album and then listen to this. You can hear the evolution from "pop band singing about girls" to "pop band trying to diagnose the world's problems."
- Read the "A Brief Inquiry" Interviews: Seek out the 2018 interviews Matty gave to The Guardian and Rolling Stone. He explains the "Music for Cars" philosophy in detail, which provides a lot of the intellectual scaffolding for these lyrics.
- Check the "The Downtown Lights" Connection: Play the two songs back-to-back. Notice how the 1975 took a gentle, melancholic pulse and turned it into an urgent, metallic heartbeat.
The 1975 might be a polarizing band, and Matty Healy might be a polarizing figure, but Love It If We Made It remains an undeniable achievement. It’s one of those rare moments where a pop band stopped trying to be liked and started trying to be honest. It’s messy, it’s loud, and it’s deeply uncomfortable. But honestly? That’s exactly why it works.
To "make it" doesn't mean everything becomes perfect. It just means we keep going despite the chaos. In a world that often feels like it's spinning out of control, that might be the most hopeful message we’ve got.