“Not The 1975,” the breakthrough hit by singer/songwriter Knox, was inspired by a girl telling him, “You’re never going to be Matty Healy” — the lead singer of the British band The 1975. So, how does The 1975 feel about Knox’s tribute? He says he actually heard from Matty, who slid into his DMs.
“It was very funny,” Knox tells ABC Audio. “He said, ‘Congrats on the song.’ And then he said, ‘Now give me a million dollars.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I don’t exactly have that to give you, brother.’ But it was super cool.”
“It’s crazy that we have a song … that’s that big. That’s absolutely mind-blowing,” he gushes. “I never thought in a million years that would ever happen. … When we wrote the song, we were like, ‘Could you imagine if they heard this?’ And now they have. And I think that is absolutely incredible.”
Knox also says that once he came up with the concept of the song, he and his co-writers decided to start throwing in The 1975 references into the lyrics — for example, they mention the band’s songs “Chocolate,” “Oh Caroline” and “Looking for Somebody (To Love).”
“As we were making the song and actually properly recording it, we were just like, ‘Dude, let’s, like, see how far we can push it without like being cheesy,'” Knox tells ABC Audio. But he says the “looking for somebody tonight” line wasn’t a deliberate reference.
“My friend Spencer was actually the person who wrote that line, and he didn’t realize,” Knox explains. “But as soon as he said it, I was like, ‘Dude, they have a song called “Looking for Somebody!”‘ And so we were like, ‘Oh, that’s the line.'”
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