A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships Tracklist
A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is The 1975’s third studio album that was released on 30 November 2018. The album got leaked four days before the official release.
The band originally planned to release an EP titled What a Shame which was called off, as the project had “become something bigger” according to the band’s manager Jamie Oborne. Matty Healy thought that the third album should be the last one for the band but then he changed his mind and decided to make two records and release them in a six months time:
For a while, I’d been thinking that this would be our last album. The reason I did that is that when you’re a writer, you want a good ending. It would have been at the end of the decade, and it would have been this whole decade-long thing, and stylistically I love that. But I also thought we’re not good enough to quit yet. Have we actually done anything?
ABIIOR was announced as the first of two parts, with plans for the second album Notes on a Conditional Form to be released in June 2019. Matty stated that these two albums would be part of the “Music for Cars era”, with “era” referring to “the Umbrella for whatever music comes out in this timeframe”.
On speaking about the release of A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, Healy stated in an interview with NME:
If you look at third albums, ‘OK Computer’ or ‘The Queen Is Dead’, that’s what we need to do,” he said. “I want a legacy. I want people to look back and think our records were the most important pop records that a band put out in this decade.
Healy explains the main theme and message of ABIIOR:
’A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships’ is all relationships. I’m talking about all relationships that are mediated online. What does reality mean in 15 years, if this is our base reality?
There’s anger in ‘A Brief Inquiry…’, but there’s everything in there. It needs to be hopeful; it needs to be fearful, it needs to be everything I am. Insecure, cocky, fragile. I’m a modernist. I’m not about retrogressive ideas. I love moving things forward; I love technology. I love robots. I’m all about the future if we get one.
On September 10, the band revealed the cover art for the album in a tweet.
“A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships” Q&A
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Translations
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What is the origin of the album's title?
‘The Context Of The Digital: A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships’ is the title of Gene McHugh’s essay. Talking about the inspiration behind the record’s title, Matty says:
Not necessarily [inspired] by the essay itself, but by the title – it was curated [by Omar Kholeif] into a book called ‘You Are Here: Art After The Internet’. At the time, I lived in quite a hipstery part of London, so if you get the train from Clapton into Central there’s normally a lot of arty types on the train. So I just happened to be sat next to somebody who must have been reading that book, because that was the page that I glanced at, and the sentence just made a lot of sense. And then I went and read the essay, but to be honest with you, I wasn’t making a record about the internet. I just wanted to make a record about life and about the human experience, and because the internet is so total within that, I kind of couldn’t avoid making a record about the internet.
The title of this album stems from the heavy use of technology in today’s society. The band had been posting a lot of tech related quotes, pictures, and phrases on social media prior to the release of Give Yourself a Try, and the new album will put a large focus on examining the effects of so much technology in the modern world.
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Was the material on this album written a while ago?
Most of it. George [Daniel] wrote the instrumental to “Love It If We Made It” in 2015. You know where Dirty Hit [the band’s label] is? Grenfell’s round the corner. A year before that happened, I’d ask Ed [Blow, label co-manager] every day if he’d go to the newsagents for tabloids. My idea for “Love It If We Made It” was a list of press headlines. Then Grenfell happened. I was so upset. That’s when the song became this outward exorcism.
— Matty Healy, The Vulture.
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Is this album a concept record?
“I had this profound-but-also-not-profound realization that this whole thing outside of this — all of our communication with other people — is mediated through the internet. That’s not even an interesting thing to point out, right? But say that to somebody ten years ago. If you make a record about any kind of relationship, you’re making a record about the internet. Neil Young isn’t gonna put out a new song about missing his lover where he references FaceTime — it’s too modern. In order to be truly honest about how one has a long-distance relationship, you have to talk about these things.”
— Matty Healy, The Fader.
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How did this album do on the charts?
This album peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200 for the week of December 15, 2018.
