Concerts are perhaps the most engaging way to experience music, but it comes with a cost. Even before the pandemic, for example, Coldplay indicated they wouldn’t tour in support of their new album, Everyday Life, for environmental reasons. The 1975’s Matty Healy feels similarly, and he believes that when concerts return after the pandemic, things need to change.
In a recent interview, Healy said that once life returns to normal after the coronavirus threat is under control, humanity “can’t go into a new world and start to rebuild it exactly like the last one”:
“I don’t think we’re going to get rid of live music, because there’s something about reaching out [to an artist] in a gig that ‘s really powerful. It’s like a religious pilgrimage. I’m thinking, get rid of gigs at night. Build a carbon neutral black tent that you kind of let light into, in an artistic way, and then use that to light the stage. I don’t know! This idea that people can just keep doing what they’re doing and massage it enough to make it socially acceptable is over. There has to be some kind of sacrifice.
I don’t want to make any statements like, ‘I’m never doing another show.’ But, for example, my big f*cking 50 foot wall — that’s gone already! What am I gonna do? ‘Pandemic was crazy! Want to come to my light f*cking experiment at Madison Square Garden?’ We’ve just got to think about what live music is and what’s important about it. It’s about taking this as an opportunity to really take the climate crisis seriously. We can’t go into a new world and start to rebuild it exactly like the last one, and then wait until it gets f*cked again, and then start dealing with climate change. We need to start now.”
Read the full interview here.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.