In 2020, I did a top ten list for the best songs from bad albums.  It was a topic I pretty much wanted to do from the moment I started doing Top Ten lists, as it’s always fascinated me when a bad band or a band doing poorly on a project get it right, if only once or a few times.  Judging from The 1975’s mixed reviews from the main press and negative reviews from the YouTube reviewer sphere for their recent double album Notes On A Conditional Form, it looks like we’ve got one more addition to this list.

“If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” – The 1975 feat. Bob Reynolds

Pop
#12 peak

Alternative
#14 peak, #48 year-end

Welcome to another band that I’m not an expert on.  I was first introduced to this band not because of their music, but because I’m a fan of a much-reviled Britpop band called Menswear, and I’d run into search results for The 1975’s song “Menswear” when I was trying to hear “Daydreamer” and “Sleeping In.”  After years of hearing about them, I finally heard a full song of theirs with “Love It If We Made It,” their previous hit song from 2018, also from a lukewarmly-received album.  And while that song also used sex as a commentary on our current lifestyle, it was best described as bizarre, a song that was too experimental for its material, too uplifting for its sound.  It was intriguing, but came across as average overall.  But this year, The 1975 made sure their single counted.

A constant theme in music over the last five years has been artists desperately digging through the 1980s and stuffing whatever they can find – especially synthpop – into their music.  So much for the claim that nostalgia is for two decades ago.  Well if those songs were representative of the 80’s, “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” is super 80s.  This doesn’t sound like a song from 2020 recalling the sounds of the 1980s, it literally sounds like it was made in 1985 and shelved for 35 years.  A pulsing synthpop beat, a guitar riff that sounds like it was stolen from Andy Summers’s back catalog, and horn blasts in the chorus that may or may not have been synthesized.  And the thing is, it works – the beat makes you bob your head to the music, the guitar riffs are crystal-clear, and the horn blasts are euphoric – a celebration where everyone is invited.  In a world where 80s reboots have become incredibly repetitive, “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” is a celebration of the 80s in the best way possible.

That eighties sound is juxtaposed, by the lyrics, which do have a modern topic in place: online relationships.  Or it may be just relationships in general, I get confused when reading the Genius annotation.  But what it sounds like it’s about is a man jealous of his ex posting about her great life on social media, as indicated by the opening lyric:

I see her online
All the time

With this info, the narrator clings on for dear life with a girl he met online.  He doesn’t care if their romance isn’t real, he just wants some semblance of the life he once had.  It ranges from announcing in the second verse that he calls her whilst naked, and requesting in the chorus that she do the same:

Maybe I would like you better if you took off your clothes
I’m not playing with you, baby
I think that you should give it a go

Wow.  That’s… really depressing the more I think about it, using an artificial relationship to make up for the lack of a real one.  But it speaks to The 1975’s talents as songwriters, how they were able to make a song about living in fantasy and making it truly sound like it’s all or nothing with the glorious instrumentation and powerful melodies.  And just when you thought it couldn’t sound any more eighties, guest musician Bob Reynolds comes in with a sax solo.  It’s cheesy, cartoonish, and just perfect… a blast of nostalgia to cap off a song that juxtaposes the hedonistic fun of the 1980s with the sterilization of today.  Misery doesn’t sound so bad when you pair it with a soundtrack for a John Hughes film, apparently.

IMAGE SOURCES

Single advertisement from Paste Magazine

Photo of The 1975 from The Guardian

Online relationship image from GU Digital Media