“The Sound” by 1975

"The Sound" was the fourth single from the 1975's second album, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It, released through Dirty Hit and Polydor on 19 February 2016, and it's the band going all-in on pop with zero embarrassment. Matty Healy, chasing the big melodies of the pop records he grew up on, first offered it to One Direction, who passed.

Mike Crossey produced it with Healy and George Daniel, and it's a maximalist, four-on-the-floor rush with a 1980s pulse: disco-house piano, syncopated synths, synthetic strings, an electric guitar solo and the London Community Gospel Choir. Healy's lyric circles a relationship eaten up by deceit and his fixation on a lover's heartbeat. Critics singled it out as an album highlight, and it peaked at 15 in the UK, the band's best singles-chart showing at the time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.