Mr. 75 Years Meets Mr. 1975: An Open Letter to Matty Healy

If anybody reading this has music biz connections, please forward it to the guy in question. Thank you.

Dear Matty:

First of all, let me say up front that I think you and your band are terrific. You write great songs and make great records and you are the most charismatic front man I've seen in years -- funny, sexy, and original. Frankly, if I was your age and I had just seen the video of you guys below ...

...I'd be spending countless hours in front of my bedroom mirror trying to reproduce your stage moves.

Seriously -- when I saw that for the first time I wanted to BE you. I haven't had that reaction to a pop star in eons.

But then I read the essentially sympathetic New Yorker profile of you and your band in the May 29, 2023 issue...

Still, Healy remains caught between the heartfelt and the arch. On the second night at the O2, after calling the right wing’s appeal to men “dangerous,” he seemed suddenly self-conscious about his righteous pose. “I also really don’t care that much, to be honest,” he said. On the roof of the Electric, he launched into a passionate rant about the banjo player Winston Marshall, who’d left the band Mumford & Sons after praising the alt-right Twitter figure Andy Ngo and prompting an online furor. Marshall, as Healy saw it, had been radicalized not so much by right-wing ideas as by the praise and attention he’d got from right-wing circles—this, Healy said, is the situation for all sorts of young men whose world views are getting distorted by online feedback loops. Then he said, again, that he didn’t really care that much.

...and my immediate reaction was dude -- what the fuck?

I mean, when I finished the piece, all I could think of was the old Saturday Night Live exchange between Phil Hartman's Frank Sinatra and Jan Hooks' Sinéad O'Connor...

...which is the perfect advice to any pop star who feels the weight of the world on their shoulders:

"Swing, baby! You're Platinum!"

Honest to God, Matty -- you don't owe me or anybody out there anything. I mean, I totally sympathize with you and the rest of your generation who have to navigate through life in a cocoon bounded on all sides by social media. And I can't even imagine the pressure and the nagging psychological tzuris you face on a daily basis from your omnipresent on-line fans.

Also, let's face it -- if I had to worry about Taylor Swift writing a song about our breakup I'd be huffing huge quantities of drugs, too.

But take my advice, pal -- you don't need this pop star shit anymore. You're young, with your whole life ahead of you, and you have squillions in the bank. Just walk away, and do something else -- hell, anything else -- you want to do before it's too late. A career in dentistry might be something you could look into, but you get the idea.

Your amigo,

Steve Simels