About You is one of the most beloved songs by The 1975, from their album Being Funny in a Foreign Language, released on October 14, 2022. Fans enjoyed the new album immediately, and they specifically wanted to delve into the lyrics of this song, probably because of its dreamy mood, enriched by the female voice of Carly Holt. In this article, we will explore the song’s meaning, and you’ll also find the complete lyrics at the end.
For long-time fans, About You is much more than a standalone track; it is the spiritual successor to the 2013 anthem Robbers. While Robbers captured the chaotic, combustible energy of young, toxic love, About You explores the aftermath a decade later. It’s the sound of the smoke after the fire has gone out—the realization that while life moves on, the mind remains tethered to a specific ‘freeze-frame’ of the past. It is the adult version of longing: less loud, but infinitely more persistent.
You can find the official audio of the song below.
About You: the song lyric and their meaning
About You is a sweet song about the sensations you feel when you are deeply in love. In the lyrics, the singer describes how he still remembers why he loves that person and asks his girl, “Do you think I have forgotten?”
I know a place
It’s somewhere I go when I need to remember your face
We get married in our heads
Something to do while we try to recall how we met
The place he refers to in the song’s beginning belongs to his memories. The singer uses the present, but it’s not clear whether he’s still together with this girl. The repeated question, “do you think I have forgotten?” leaves this doubt: the two can still be together, and the singer wants to confirm that he still remembers the reason why he’s in love with her, or they are no longer a couple, and he wants to remember her, and what makes his love her so much.
If the haunting atmosphere of this track resonates with you, explore how Joji’s ‘Love You Less‘ navigates the same blurred line between wanting to forget and being unable to let go.
You and I were alive
With nothing to do I could lay and just look in your eyes
Wait and pretend
Hold on and hope that we’ll find our way back in the end
Talking about “pretending” and the hope to find the way back support the theory that the two are not currently together. From this point of view, the song becomes a celebration of pure emotions, even when the person we love is not next to us. In the lyrics of About You, we can see the instinct we have to travel with our imagination to the situations and the contexts that make us feel good. That would match the lyrics in Part Of The Band, where The 1975 sing about preferring to live in their imagination instead of this world, and also All I Need To Hear, where the singer wants to hear that he’s loved, whether it’s true or not.
The ethereal bridge featuring Carly Holt (wife of guitarist Adam Hann) serves as the song’s psychological core. Her voice doesn’t sound like a present partner; it sounds like an echo from a hallway in a dream. This perfectly illustrates the concept of limerence—an involuntary state of intense longing for someone from the past. When she sings her verse, it represents the moment we stop seeing the real person and start worshiping the ‘ghost’ of who they were, and who we were when we were with them.
There was something about you that now I can’t remember
It’s the same damn thing that made my heart surrender
And I’ll miss you on a train
I’ll miss you in the morning
The line ‘There was something about you that I can’t quite remember’ is a masterful description of emotional trauma. It highlights a strange human paradox: we can forget a person’s face or the exact words of a conversation, but the feeling they left behind remains perfectly intact. The sentiment survives the memory of the facts, proving that our hearts often have a much longer memory than our minds.
That’s the real meaning of the lyrics inside About You: I’m still in love with you, and I haven’t forgotten the reasons that make me so much in love. Even if you are not here with me now, I often go back to my memories, retracing the situations that made me feel happy with you, the things I miss every day being far from you.
And if you are interested in similar songs: while Matty Healy sings of a ghostly past, Daniel Caesar’s ‘Always‘ offers a different perspective on eternal devotion—read our full analysis of its meaning below.
The complete lyrics
I know a place
It’s somewhere I go when I need to remember your face
We get married in our heads
Something to do while we try to recall how we met
Do you think I have forgotten?
Do you think I have forgotten?
Do you think I have forgotten
About you?
You and I were alive
With nothing to do I could lay and just look in your eyes
Wait and pretend
Hold on and hope that we’ll find our way back in the end
Do you think I have forgotten?
Do you think I have forgotten?
Do you think I have forgotten
About you?
Do you think I have forgotten?
Do you think I have forgotten?
Do you think I have forgotten
About you?
There was something about you that now I can’t remember
It’s the same damn thing that made my heart surrender
And I’ll miss you on a train
I’ll miss you in the morning
I never know what to think about
I think about you
About you
Do you think I have forgotten about you?
About you
About you
About you
Do you think I have forgotten about you?
About you
