017 // sincerity is scary

irony is easy. it's harder to be earnest.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Hey, welcome to episode 17 of Television of Your Mouth, a 1975 podcast. I feel like we are just cranking through these brief inquiry episodes. My day job in the summer tends to slow down a bit, so I have a little more headspace to put towards this, which is nice. Let's see, what's been going on? Some 1975 related news. If you need a 1975 fix, Tiny Habits just released their new song called Anything He Was, which features some vocals from Maddie. They are the trio that performed with him at Sunday for Sammy back in February. And they're from My Neck of the Woods. They are Berkeley kids that met at Berkeley. So shout out 617. We love to see that. If you haven't heard them before, they're very, very, very talented vocalists. So definitely check them out. And I believe they just announced a tour too. So if you like what you hear, buy a ticket. Go see them. For this episode, I'm going to be talking about a fan favorite music video and a crowd favorite at shows. I'll be talking about the music video for Sincerity is Scary, released on November 21st, 2018. And directed by Warren Fu. Warren Fu is a master director of music videos. He's created some music videos for some of my favorite artists, working with them multiple times and creating a creative partnership with them, including The Strokes, The Killers, Daft Punk, and Phoenix. He's also an illustrator as well, and he's created artwork and advertisements for artists. And he also worked, I think it was on episode one of Star Wars. I forget which general he illustrated. But yeah, he's multifaceted, talented dude, and he recently played a major role in orchestrating the killer's performance ahead of the Championship League match between Arsenal and France. Unfortunately, Arsenal lost, but we move on. So yeah, he's kind of a big deal. He talked to Vice in 2016, and I love what he had to say about how limiting the use of labels in art can be. He said, quote, I personally dislike style labels because they are usually overlook the feeling of what I'm aiming for. Maybe I'm not always successful at it, but emotional connection is almost always my goal, whether it be using humor, nostalgia, euphoria, heartbreak, fear, etc. I view aesthetic as just the outer shell, just one of the many ingredients used to help capture a feeling. But when I'm thinking of what I want to listen to or what movie I want to watch, a lot of the time I base that decision on how I want to feel. It's never I want to listen to rock music right now. It's I want to listen to music that makes me feel this way and takes me back to this moment. I have a playlist on Spotify called I'm Buzzed at 2 a.m. walking home from the bar that has songs that capture how that feels for me. And I always imagine the lighting in that scenario being very Blade Runner 2049. Maybe I'll share on the podcast's Instagram account if anyone wants to listen to it. If you're a fan of the 1975, you already knew that Maddie is heavily involved in the creative process of making these music videos. But doing this podcast has confirmed that for me. Speaking to Promo News in 2018, Warren said this about working with Maddie. Quote, it's been a real treat having brainstormed sessions with Maddie Healy on ideas the past few months. When it comes to music videos, it never ceases to amaze me when sketches on a whim materialize in person a few days later on set. There's no better feeling, end quote. I would love to know what parts of the video ended up being happy accidents or created on the fly, or which things they had to pivot on, or even which things they wanted to do, but for some reason they ended up not being able to do them. When I kicked off the brief inquiry era of the podcast, I talked about how a lot of this album was shaped by Maddie's experience with addiction and going to rehab. Going through an experience like that would leave anyone feeling cut open, metaphorically speaking. There are no more secrets to hide behind, and you are emotionally laid bare. You start having very introspective thoughts about yourself and you know why you are the way you are. Sincerity is scary, is about abandoning the irony and the sardonic points of views that can be really easy to hide behind. It's easier to be ironic, which is a 1975 Maddie specialty. It's harder, and I would argue more important to be sincere. Here's a clip of Maddie talking more about this idea to genius in 2018.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

It's harder to be really sincere because you have to be really human and you have to be really stoppy and a bit of a sigh, and you have to be a bit soft. Do you know what I mean? And it's easier to be ironic in the face of those situations. It's easier to like take the piss out of it or like be really sardonic. It's just something that I really, really noticed and I kind of wanted to denounce. Irony is okay. Like it's fine. It's a tried and tested way of not really dealing with stuff. It's harder to be really sincere. It's harder to be soft and vulnerable in the face of you know, earnestness. Like it's serious shit.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Also, Maddie talked to M NME in 2018 and mentioned how his rehab experience affected his confidence and how that inspired one particular iconic style choice for the video, which became like a security blanket of sorts, which was the rabbit hat, now coined the sincerity hat. He said, quote, I lost my confidence so brutally around January, February this year, and it took me a while to get it back. You're facing this apprenticeship into maturehood, and there's a reluctance to go through that apprenticeship, kind of rabbit in the headlights thing. There's a naivety and a fantasy and a removal and a kind of childlike thing about the hat, end quote. Maddie sourced the hat, or maybe it was their stylist, Patricia, I'm not sure. Um, the original from the prop store at the National Theatre in London. The music video for Sincerity is Scary was filmed in the Disney lot in LA. And I love the irony of having a song about sincerity being created in a place that's all about making movie magic in a town that is not known for its sincerity. Sorry, LA, I'm an East Coast girl, I could never do it. So Sincerity is scary. The music video starts with a close-up of Maddie waking up in bed and side note. Um, why does his shirt look like it has been nibbled by moths? The topic of sleep. Um, sleep has always been complicated for Maddie. He's mentioned this in interviews before: that he never has pleasant dreams and it's just kind of constant nightmares. And drugs, even harmless ones like weed, can stop you from dreaming. This music video is full of Easter eggs. I I bet there's some that after this video came out in 2018, so after eight years, we still have not discovered yet. So I'm going to go through the ones that that I've noticed. But if you've noticed some, please let me know if I missed anything. So, 15-second mark, pretty quickly we get our first Easter egg. Um, the alarm clock next to Maddie's bed has four hands, each pointing to the numbers 1, 9, 7, and 5. The photograph he passes on the wall is from avant-garde artist Joseph Byes titled I Like America and America Likes Me, which is track eight off a brief inquiry. Around the 35-second mark, Maddie opens the door wearing the Sincerity hat, and he steps onto the stoop of his apartment, and we get the address number above the door, which is probably guessed it, 1975. The funky trumpets kick in around the 40-second mark, played by two guys sitting on the stoop. But the actual trumpets for the song were recorded by the late Roy Hargrove, who sadly passed away very young, only a few weeks before this music video was released. He does not appear in this music video. He also worked with the guys before the song. He worked with them on I Like It When You Sleep, giving trumpet to If I Believe You. And he also plays on Frile's State of Mind, which would be released on their next album, Notes on a Conditional Form. Hargrove was a two-time Grammy winner who worked on iconic albums like D'Angelo's Voodoo and iconic artists like Haman and Eric Kabedu. Getting to work with him on a brief inquiry was definitely a highlight for the guys. Around the 52nd mark, we see No Rome walking a Dalmatian, and I wonder if it's the same one that appears in the narcissist music video. Also, a little bit of a tangent, but just follow me here. Okay, so the band Sublime was famous for their sort of unofficial Dalmatian mascot called Lou Dog, which was the dog of Bradley Knoll, the lead singer of Sublime. When Bradley passed away, a new iteration of Sublime formed and toured with a new lead singer that went by the name Rome. So it was Sublime with Rome. Literally no relation to the 1975 or No Rome, but that's just where my brain went when I see the Dalmatian with No Rome. Okay, thank you for listening and humoring me. Back to the 1975. Um, okay. After No Rome, we see Maddie walking by a man reading a newspaper with a paper bag over his head, and the paper bag has the brief inquiry title written on it. This guy is probably a nod to author David Foster Wallace and the cover of his collection of short stories titled Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. I never read the book, but I saw the movie years ago, and I remember it being okay. Wallace famously valued sincerity and slammed postmodern ideals and irony, so this little tribute to him feels very appropriate. The newspaper The Man is Reading has the headline from Love It If We Made It. Modernity has failed us. The newspaper is titled The Macomb Tribune, and I tried doing some research to see if there's any significance to this. From what I was able to find, it's actually a newspaper based in Michigan called the Macomb Daily, which was one of the first daily newspapers to automate its circulation onto computers. So, including this in a music video for a single that is off an album that deals with the downfalls and negative effects of technology in the current age makes sense. Print is definitely dead, and thanks to the internet. Around the 1 minute 10 second mark, Maddie falls down a hole in the sidewalk, metaphorical rabbit hole, maybe, and comes out another brownstone wearing a different outfit. Then we get some Michael Jackson dance moves and a nod to singing in the rain. Also, I get a little Dick Van Dyke, Mary Poppins penguin energy here, too. We get more outfit changes, and it's all very classic Hollywood to me. It's very playful and very youthful. Maddie had this to say in 2018 about this music video. Quote, it was the Disney lot in LA, and the other side of the wall is desert. It's hard because I try not to brag about sincerity, but it is my proudest visual thing. I invented stuff for it, like at the end. No one's noticed it yet, but when the marching band comes along and I'm walking on the spot, that's because I put a treadmill in front of the camera. I'm always just sliding around this one space in the frame. End quote. The changing of outfits, the illusions. Is everything what it seems? Around the two-minute, ten-second mark, I am clocking some classic boy band music video dance moves, you guys. It's very, very brief, but I would know that Nick Carter arm gesture anywhere, and the guys have been known to bust out a I Want It That Way jam during a show. Then we get some Maddie soccer, sorry, football skills, which at the time people thought they casted a double for, which Maddie took great offense to. Then Maddie saves Ross from a falling piano, which is a classic old Hollywood comedic trope. Makes sense for them to include that in this video. At 2 minutes 41 seconds, the marching band comes in and we see the movie theater marquee displaying the poetry is in the streets in French. The unofficial motto of the 1975, which they also put on a marquee in the robbers music video as well. Towards the end of the video, Maddie brings in a little girl dressed in a change of heart attire with an umbrella. And again, using an old Hollywood trick, he makes it rain by pouring a watering can on her from the top of a ladder. Then the music video pans to the sky and it's over. This video is so cozy and playful and fun. It's almost childish, and if you want true sincerity, speak to a toddler. They will humble you guaranteed every time. And again, I love the juxtaposition of a song about sincerity being filmed in a place of make-believe. And using practical effects versus technology like computer-generated imagery. We only have one more video left in the brief inquiry era. But while doing research for this episode, I discovered that there was a time that the song Mine and the song I Always Want to Die sometimes were going to be singles with accompanying music videos. At least that's what Maddie told Enemy in December of 2018. I wonder what happened to those plans. It could have just been a classic case of Maddie getting ahead of himself and saying something to the public, and then it never happens. But in that same interview, he shared the first two lyrics for Playing on My Mind, which would be released on the next album on Notes. And I want to share with you guys what the opening lyrics were for that song at the time. Okay, Maddie said the opening lyrics were, quote, could I play Batman? Will I be a fat man? It's just me asking loads of me trying to figure stuff out, end quote. Ladies and gentlemen, we were robbed. Thank you for listening to this episode of Television of Your Mouth, a 1975 podcast. All episodes are written, recorded, and produced by me, Britt. If you want to get in touch or follow the podcast, you can on Instagram at TelevisionOfYourMouth. And I hope you enjoyed. And I'll see you next time. And directed by Warren Foo. Warren Fu is a master director of music videos.