From their R1 interview:

 

- tour next year

- most consistently sounding album

- Jack Antonoff also worked on other tracks!

think i need to relisten as i cannot remember this

Billboard around London are teasing ‘Happiness’ to be released on August 3rd! It’ll be interesting to see if this is a more commercial sounding single, not that it bothers me either way haha.

It’s premiering on Beats1 on Wednesday at 17:00 BST!

Here it is! Definitely the mainstream lead single of the two then, love the sax solo :wub:

 

Absolutely loved ‘Part Of The Band’ but REALLY not feeling ‘Happiness’ - hopefully it’s a blip for them

I wish the general perception I’ve seen so far liked POTB as much as Happiness :lol:

DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ had some involvement with the production on it!

Wow! DJ Sabrina’s mainstream moment finally here?

 

I can totally hear that actually, the dance backing and use of sax. Quite a good track.

To be fair though, The 1975 (and other co-producer Jack Antonoff) do use a lot of sax anyway!

So is this the official second single? Or is it a grat? Or was 'Part Of The Band' just a promo track and this is the actual single? Very confusing with so little time between the two releases!

POTB is far better

'Part Of The Band' is definitely an interesting direction for them to go in but it still feels quite lacking in the execution sadly. Saw a lot of people comparing it to Bon Iver which I can see for sure.

Deleted - I don't know what I meant when I wrote this post oop a few years back :lol:

How on earth is POTB like those two songs? I can’t think of two more different!

I think they are going to struggle this era - they are now very much an ‘album’ act it seems and the last album faired poorly sales and chart wise to their previous ones (I can’t remember who the chart battle was with but they had to end up reducing quite heavily to get the #1).

They’ve never massively been a singles band though, all through their career they’ve had low Top 40s/60s, with a couple of higher ones sprinkled in. Though the fact their new singles still debut at around #20 on Spotify is very solid, it’s a shame Happiness hasn’t had any support from them yet.

 

They could have been the biggest band in the world if they didn’t make so much uncommercial music, but they do and they’ve been (generally) rewarded critically for it. Unfortunately it’s tricky to have both for a lot of artists!

 

Their last album chart battle was against KSI, they did reduce but I’m not sure how much. It couldn’t have been too heavy or else I’d have picked up more than just the CD. :lol:

Didn’t help by the fact they became successful just as indie music was a no go area in the charts!

Their last album was genuinely terrible though. I am a big fan of them, but it was just an overlong mess.

 

I'm liking both the songs I've heard so far from this era - not sure it is make of break for them as they are a huge band and this often tends to be the case.

Tbh I do love most of the songs on Notes, but as an album it is just too long for a full listen. I would have preferred it to be split in two really, perhaps with the electronic songs as an EP.