Posted by Part of the Band is the new song by The 1975, released on July 7th, 2022. It’s the first single extracted from their new album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, out on October 14th. The song comes together with a beautiful black and white video that will remind people of The Seventh Seal, the classic movie by Ingmar Bergman. The song lyrics are cryptic and might raise many questions: in this article, we will analyze them and provide an interpretation of the meaning.
You can find the official video of Part of the Band below.
Part of the Band: the meaning of the lyrics
In Part of the Band, Matty Healy sings about many images and situations he imagines in his head. “In my, my, my imagination” is a line repeated many times, hinting that the song represents his way of pouring out his thoughts about life.
She was part of the Air Force, I was part of the band
I always used to bust into her hand
In my, my, my imagination
I was living my best life, living with my parents
Way before the paying penance and verbal propellants
And my, my, my cancellation, hm, yeah
Matty recalls the time when he was young, and life was innocent, based mainly on all the things he could imagine. His best life was when he lived with his parents, so we are talking about childhood. The reference to his cancellation is meaningful: it probably refers to when the singer had to deactivate his Twitter account after a public statement about George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter topic. From this point of view, life was much easier when he was young, and he could spend his days inside his imagination. An example of images his imagination was producing is in the following lines:
And I fell in love with a boy, it was kinda lame
I was Rimbaud and he was Paul Verlaine
In my, my, my imagination
Rimbaud and Verlaine were two poets famous for being homosexual, and that struck his mind, feeding his fantasy. The singer seems wholly immersed in his mind, and the chorus represents the direct outcome of spending time inside his head:
At home, somewhere I don’t like
Eating stuff off of motorbikes
Coming to her lookalikes
I can’t get the language right
Just tell me what’s unladylike
He’s home, eating delivery food and playing with himself, without any contact with the outer world.
The world looks complicated in his eyes, and we realize it in the song’s second half: society demands politically correct speech, so he tries to express a thought that doesn’t offend anybody. But he mentions the feelings that spin around the internet, emotions that come from the worst of us. He’s expressing discomfort about how hard it is today to speak publicly, with so many people ready to accuse you of being offensive.
“I like my men like I like my coffee
Full of soy milk and so sweet, it won’t offend anybody”
Whilst staining the pages of the nation, oh, yeah
The worst inside of us begets
That feeling on the internet
It’s like someone intended it
Ultimately, this might be the true meaning of Part of the Band lyrics: the world and the internet are a place too hard to live; the singer prefers to leave that environment and go back to his imagination, where things are more straightforward, safer, comfortable. From this point of view, the last verse is meaningful: am I just being egocentric, diving inside my head just because it’s easier? There is also a reference to his past heroin addiction, which we can see as another way Matty had to escape reality and live in a safer, inner world.
Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke?
Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke
Calling his ego imagination?
I’ve not picked up that in a thousand four hundred days
And nine hours and sixteen minutes, babe
It’s kind of my daily iteration
After all, it looks like a stubborn statement against the world: I used to express what I thought, and you refused me, forcing me to ban myself. Why should I resist the temptation to just live inside my imagination?
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The complete lyrics
She was part of the Air Force, I was part of the band
I always used to bust into her hand
In my, my, my imagination
I was living my best life, living with my parents
Way before the paying penance and verbal propellants
And my, my, my cancellation, hm, yeah
And I fell in love with a boy, it was kinda lame
I was Rimbaud and he was Paul Verlaine
In my, my, my imagination
So many cringes and her*in binges
I was coming off the hinges, living on the fringes
Of my, my, my imagination, oh, yeah
Enough about me now
“You gotta talk about the people, baby”
But that’s kind of the idea
At home, somewhere I don’t like
Eating stuff off of motorbikes
Coming to her lookalikes
I can’t get the language right
Just tell me what’s unladylike
I know some Vaccinista tote bag chic baristas
Sitting in east on their communista keisters
Writing about their ejaculations
“I like my men like I like my coffee
Full of soy milk and so sweet, it won’t offend anybody”
Whilst staining the pages of the nation, oh, yeah
A Xanax and a Newport
“Well I take care of my kids”, she said
The worst inside of us begets
That feeling on the internet
It’s like someone intended it
(Like advertising cigarettes)
A diamond in the rough begets
The diamond with a scruff you get
Am I ironically woke? The b*tt of my joke?
Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke
Calling his ego imagination?
I’ve not picked up that in a thousand four hundred days
And nine hours and sixteen minutes, babe
It’s kind of my daily iteration
