The 1975 are fresh off the release of their new album, Notes On A Conditional Form. Although the group doesn’t often have guests on their songs, they recruited Phoebe Bridgers for “Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America,” and now Bridgers has spoken up to defend them against haters.
In a new profile from The Forty Five, she explains why she thinks disliking the group could be considered sexist, saying, “Hating The 1975, I feel like, is sexist, because teenage girls invented that band being famous. Like, teenage girls invented The Beatles. Teenage girls invented music. You’re trying to say that something’s stupid just because teenage girls like it? It’s f*cking insane.”
Elsewhere in the piece, she spoke about Billie Eilish, and how the singer’s family having connections in show business shouldn’t count against her material: “People trying to cancel Billie Eilish is my favorite. It’s just like, you can’t handle how cool she is. Or people saying that female indie rock stars were invented by a trust fund or something. It’s like, you know where The Strokes came from? Nepotism and wealth has always informed music. It has never not. You get more opportunities or whatever, it doesn’t mean that their music is bad. And if we’re gonna shine that light on women, f*cking look around at the men whose parents bought them music as a career.”
She also expressed hope that “middle class musicians,” as she called them, don’t become an endangered species due to the coronavirus pandemic: “I hope middle class musicians survive, because there’s already not enough of them. It’s either you have a trust fund, and you can pay to go on tour… You either can afford to not make any money, or you stay in your hometown, you can barely even afford to play gigs. The middle class is disappearing, because there’s such little reward. There’s a danger that [the pandemic will] really increase the privileged divide of music, which is heinous.”
Read the full feature here.