I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It is the second studio album by English rock band The 1975. It was released on 26 February 2016.
In 2014, frontman Matthew Healy began releasing a series of cryptic tweets revealing lyrics from the album, and its title the following year. The band then officially announced and verified the album in September 2015, a month before "Love Me" was released as the lead single. During the course of five months, three more singles were released, with "A Change of Heart" released four days prior to its release.
Upon its release, the album received positive reviews from critics. The album was a commercial success, topping the charts in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Its box set received a nomination for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package at the 2017 Grammy Awards.
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Background
After the band released their self-titled debut, in 2013, they spent 2015 mostly recording a follow-up.
On 1 June, the band's twitter accounts were deleted, which caused mass speculation from both fans and media alike that the band had broken up. On 2 June, Healy tweeted again, but revealed a cryptic and symbolic comic strip containing the message that the band had gone on hiatus. A blurred Instagram picture from Healy titled "The 1975-2" set anticipation for release. The same day, the social media accounts were reinstated.
The tweet by Healy was verified as the name for their second album later in October 2015 with "Love Me" (a "very funky new single") released on 8 October.
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Style
The band cited D'Angelo, Christina Aguilera, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Roberta Flack, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Boards of Canada, Kim Carnes, Scritti Politti, and Sigur Rós as inspirations for the record's 17 tracks. The album's sound has been described as dance-pop, dance-rock, indie rock, jazz, pop, pop punk, post-rock, R&B and soul.
Promotion
Singles
On 8 October 2015, The 1975 released "Love Me" as a single from the album after announcement and was first played on BBC.
On 10 December, they first played "UGH!", the second single from the album, on Apple Music's Beats 1.
"The Sound" was premiered on Radio 1 on 14 January 2016, and was released as a radio single on 19 February. The music video premiered 6 days after.
"Somebody Else" debuted on Beats 1 with Zane Lowe on 15 February, and released on iTunes and Spotify on 16 February. The music video debuted on 7 July.
The next single, "A Change of Heart" debuted on BBC Radio 1 with Annie Mac on 22 February.
A video for "She's American" was filmed but never released.
"Loving Someone" was released as the seventh single.
Tour
A tour for the album began on 9 November 2015 in Liverpool. The band played the United Kingdom in November and the United States in December, Asia and Oceania in January 2016, Europe in March to April, and the US from April to May. They are scheduled to play nine festivals over the summer, including Firefly Music Festival in June and the Reading and Leeds Festivals in August.
On 25 July the band announced a North American Tour for Fall, beginning on 1 and 2 October at The Meadows Music & Arts Festival, and then playing three dates in Mexico, the first ever in the country.
Artwork
The album's artwork and design was created by Samuel Burgess-Johnson and photographed by David Drake.
For each song on the album, a pink neon sign was created and put against various locations to create nostalgia for the song, but to also detail the thematic material and complexity of each song through the photo's atmosphere. Burgess-Johnson worked closely with Healy to help with the placement. The box set version of the album gained a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package.
Release and reception
The album was released on 26 February 2016. The US Target edition of the album includes two bonus tracks: a demo of "A Change of Heart" and the song "How to Draw".
The record received mostly positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, the album has an average score of 75 out of 100, which indicates "generally favorable reviews" based on 24 reviews. Writing for Exclaim!, Ian Gormely noted that the band's ambition was perhaps their sole stumbling block, though pursuing all musical avenues makes the result "overstuffed, awkwardly titled and frequently brilliant." In Drowned in Sound's review of the album, they praised the album's eclecticism and lyricism, concluding that "What they've made is a bold body of work that sounds effortless and odd and sophisticated. What they do next is likely to be stadium-filling and bonkers and brilliant, but it matters little when what they're doing now is so sensational."
NME, who had previously been critical of the band, also praised the album for its scope and ambition, writing that "Any record that burrows as deep into your psyche as 'I Like It...' should be considered essential. It's hugely clever and wryly funny, too." Although music journalist Alexis Petridis noted that parts of the album were over-ambitious, he went on to claim that "[i]ncredibly, though, most of the time Healy gets away with it. That's sometimes because his observations are sharp - as a skewering of celebrity #squad culture, "you look famous, let's be friends / And portray we possess something important / And do the things we like" is pretty acute - but more usually because they come loaded with witty self-awareness and deprecation: the endless depictions of vacuous, coke-numbed girls he has met would get wearying were it not for the fact that he keeps turning the lyrical crosshair on himself." In a more mixed review, Rolling Stone criticised tracks like 'Lostmyhead' and 'Please Be Naked' for being 'boring-melty' but praised songs such as 'Somebody Else', 'Loving Someone' and 'Love Me'.
Accolades
Commercial performance
The album became the group's second number one in the United Kingdom, debuting atop the UK Albums Chart, with combined sales of over 58,000. It became the group's first number one on the US Billboard 200, with 98,000 pure album sales in its debut week, while also setting the record for longest title of a Billboard number-one album with 71 characters. The next week, it fell to #26, tying with Amos Lee's 2011 album Mission Bell for the fourth largest drop from #1 as of January 2017. It also debuted at number one in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The album was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for sales of over 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom. On April 10, 2017, the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for combined sales and album-equivalent units of over 500,000 units.
Track listing
All tracks written by Adam Hann, George Daniel, Matthew Healy and Ross MacDonald.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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