Matty Healy
Matthew Timothy Healy (born 8 April 1989) is an English singer-songwriter and record producer who is the lead vocalist and principal songwriter of indie art pop band the 1975. He is recognised for his lyricism, musical eclecticism, provocative onstage persona characterised as performance art, and influence on indie pop music.
Matty Healy
Truman Black
- Singer-songwriter
- musician
- producer
- director
2012–present
Wilmslow, Cheshire
- Art pop
- pop
- rock
- folk
- electronic
- alternative
- experimental
- Vocals
- guitar
- keyboard
- piano
- drums
- banjo
Born in London and raised largely in the Cheshire village of Alderley Edge, Healy formed the 1975 in 2002 with his schoolmates at Wilmslow High School. After signing with independent record label Dirty Hit, the band released four extended plays before releasing their self-titled studio album in 2013. They followed it with I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It (2016), A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (2018), Notes on a Conditional Form (2020) and Being Funny in a Foreign Language (2022). Each of their studio albums reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and charted on the Billboard 200, garnering critical praise and appearing in numerous publications' year-end and decade-end lists.
A vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and climate change mitigation, Healy's songs and performances also deal with themes including internet culture, masculinity, the social and political milieu as well as his personal life and relationships. He has been described as a "spokesperson for the millennial generation" by Rolling Stone, "the enfant terrible of pop-rock" by Pitchfork, "a cannily self-made bad boy" by NPR, an "expert provocateur" by Slant Magazine, and "iconoclastic" by NME.
Healy is the recipient of four Brit Awards, and two Ivor Novello Awards including Songwriter of the Year, and has also been nominated twice for the Mercury Prize and Grammy Awards.
Early life
Matthew Timothy Healy was born on 8 April 1989 in Hendon, north London.[1][2] He is a son of actors Tim Healy[3] and Denise Welch; they divorced in 2012.[4] Both are of Irish descent.[5] His maternal grandfather was a drag queen,[5] and younger brother, Louis, is an actor.[6] He lived in Melbourne from the ages of two to four[7] but spent most of his early years living on a cattle farm in Hedley on the Hill, Northumberland.[8][9] The family moved to Alderly Edge in Cheshire when he was nine.[10]
Healy's parents were working actors of stage and television for much of his childhood, with his mother becoming a celebrity figure in his teens.[11] He himself had no interest in acting[6] but did appear as an extra in his parents' television shows including Coronation Street,[12] Byker Grove[13] and Waterloo Road.[14] His parents were music fans, introducing him to soul and Motown,[15][16][17] and his father socialised with many musicians including Brian Johnson of AC/DC (who became Healy's godfather),[18] Rick Wakeman of Yes, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, and Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra.[16] Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order was a neighbour.[19] His mother's godfather, screenwriter Ian La Frenais, introduced him to Ringo Starr.[20] The first guitar Healy ever played was used by Dire Straits to record "Romeo and Juliet".[21] He has said this early proximity to musicians meant the possibility of "being a rock star was part of my reality."[22]
Healy was a quiet child, with recurring vivid nightmares.[20] He got his first drum kit when he was five,[23] and started doing karate by seven eventually earning a black belt by his teens.[24][25] For the first twelve years of his life he was an only child "so there were a lot of video games, a lot of Michael Jackson videos, a lot of singing and dancing to myself and self-involvement."[26] Unlike his younger brother,[6] Healy "grew up in a party house"[16] and has recalled sleeping "in the bar" of London's Groucho Club on numerous occasions.[27] He has remembered this aspect of his childhood as "exciting" rather than "distressing".[16] His parents both had issues with alcohol[16] and his mother used cocaine to self-medicate during periods of acute depression, including postpartum.[28]
Privately educated at Lady Barn House School[29] and King's School, Macclesfield, Healy was expelled from the latter for starting a fight club.[17][5] He won a King's School talent contest at age 12, with renditions of songs by The La's and Oasis, and told a local newspaper he hoped "to be a pop singer" when he grew up.[30] He then transferred to the local comprehensive Wilmslow High School, where he met and befriended his future bandmates.[28] He obtained GCSEs in Music and English,[31][32] subsequently attending music college for three months before dropping out.[33] The Academy of Contemporary Music website lists Healy as a 2007–2008 alumnus, obtaining a Vocals diploma.[34][35] Years later, Healy called school "a tedious imposition, getting in the way of me being a pop star".[16]
