The 1975 Listening Parties: Song Insights

January 12, 2025


Editor's note: I believe it's already obvious, but I'll state it anyway -- this is a blog post that I drafted in the year 2020, and it got buried inside the drafts folder... until now 😇. I realized there's a lot of gems in here that I still wanted to properly collate and share with the world, because The 1975 will always be my best band in the world, no matter what. 🥰 So go ahead and enjoy these content. 😁

~o~

[Some time in the year 2020...]

For the past four weekends (around Saturday, 2AM Manila time), The 1975 (my favorite band in the world!) had been holding "listening parties" for each of their full-studio albums. This is all for the promotion of their newest album entitled "Notes on a Conditional Form" which officially released on May 22, 2020.

What is a Listening Party?
In my own definition, a listening party is an organized activity of listening to each song of a specific album at the same time. The goal is for the fans to all come together, interact and have fun while listening to the songs. This is usually being done as promotion for newly released music, for example.

For the band, this activity all happened on Twitter. As preparation on my end, I had the physical CD of their second album on hand (luckily I still have a laptop with a DVD drive) and my TweetDeck account open, with columns dedicated for 1) the official hashtag (#the1975) so I could also see what the other fans were saying about the song, and 2) for the band members and staff so I could also see what they were saying about the song currently being played. I think listening parties are really cool events because they bring a sense of connection between the band and the fans. Everyone is coming together to do a common activity -- listen to the songs -- and the band also gets to share their thoughts about the song to the fans. This is extra special during these times because everyone is self-isolating, and what we need more than ever is a sense of belonging to a community. For sure, we won't be able to catch the guys in a concert anytime soon, so at least in this way, we as fans, could still communicate both to the band members and to fellow fans as well.

Unfortunately, I was only able to attend one of these listening parties live (yup, the one for ILIWYS) because this was where I had the most motivation to stay up at 2AM this is my most nostalgic album from them due to lots of happy memories now ingrained to each of the songs. I have to say that I unabashedly spammed my Twitter feed with all my spazz and feels as I listened to the songs from the album (after a long time). I just couldn't contain my emotions as I listened to each of the tracks again. It was 2AM but I was dancing and jumping around as "The Sound" blasted on my headphones. As fun as it was, the party ended with tears in my eyes because of the last two songs in the album ("Nana" and "She Lays Down"). I always avoided listening to them because they're just so emotionally heavy (Nana hits so differently now because of the pandemic), and I saw that the fans felt that way as well.

Another aspect of joining listening parties is learning new things about the songs through the tweets of the band members. For each song, they share random stuff during the time that they wrote it -- it could be a photo, a video, a memory, or a trivia on the songwriting process. It makes me appreciate the songs on a different level.

Here are the new things I learned from these listening parties (for the other three I just had to backread tweets of the band):

The 1975 (Self-titled)

The 1975


The City

M.O.N.E.Y.

Chocolate

Encounter

Robbers

Girls



Menswear


NOACF


The 1975


People

The End

Frail State of Mind

Streaming

The Birthday Party

Yeah I Know

Then Because She Goes
*no tweet from them*

Jesus Christ God Bless America
Roadkill
* I wasn't able to keep their tweet*

Me & You Together Song
* I wasn't able to keep their tweet*

I Think There's Something You Should Know

Nothing Revealed

Tonight

Shiny Collarbone

If You're Too Shy

Playing on my Mind
*I wasn't able to keep their tweet*


Having No Head

What Should I Say

Bagsy Not in the Net

Don't Worry

Guys


Looking at this list that I curated, I think I wasn't able to attend the listening parties for ILIWYS and ABIIOR. 😅 But good lord, good thing I was able to keep these tweets. They surely belong to the The 1975 museum. 😉

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2 (mga) komento

  1. I have vivid memories of those listening parties and being in the UK could "attend" all of them, and the fact they occured at a time when most things were still shutdown made them feel more so special

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    Replies
    1. Nice! 😁That is so true, it was during the time of highest uncertainty and confusion and it was so nice for the guys to organize something like this back then. I felt so happy and connected with all the fans during the listening parties. 🥰

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