Love It If We Made It

The drummer for The 1975, George Daniel, composed the instrumental for "Love It If We Made It" in 2015,[5] however Matty Healy, the band's lead singer, revealed in an annotation on Genius that the songwriting process for the track began in June 2017 in a plane during the I Like It When You Sleep tour. The instrumentation for "Love It If We Made It", "Mine" and "I Couldn't Be More in Love" having been composed, Healy explained that "we knew that [...] we could do whatever we wanted and write whatever record we wanted", and consequently decided to make a song similar to Prince's "Sign 'O' the Times" inspired by events from 2016 to 2018. He clarified that the band wanted to create a "super modern" song rather than a protest song "because it couldn’t be subjective, it had to be objective."[4] The song was further inspired by the sophisti-pop group The Blue Nile, in particular their 1989 album Hats, and Healy has referred to the song's sound as "The Blue Nile on steroids."[6]

In an interview with Pitchfork, Healy said: "I got [Dirty Hit Records product manager] Ed [Blow] to pick up the tabloid newspapers on the way into the office so I could eventually, after a year, have every single tabloid headline and write a song about that" and added that "then I had loads of stuff, and I had to make it all rhyme. That was the most difficult bit."[6] In a separate interview with Billboard, he explained that "hopefully [the song] could be used on a montage for the times, but it’s not going to change the times. It doesn't provide a solution."[7]

When discussing the song's frequent use of strong language, Healy told Zane Lowe upon the song's premiere on Beats 1 that "this is one [song] it was necessary for and I like it because we're just in a free place creatively."[8] However, when he included the line "I moved on her like a bitch", a quote by US President Donald Trump in 2005 in the Access Hollywood tape, his bandmates told him "It's another swear word." Nevertheless, they decided to keep the line because "if we're going to get censored [on the radio], we're going to get censored for verbatim quoting the leader of the free world."[6]

Prior to the song's release, The 1975 fans received a package which stated that "Love It If We Made It" would be released on 19 July 2018 and also included the lyrics for the track.[9] The track premiered Zane Lowe's Beats 1 show as World Record on the stated date and was released on iTunes through Dirty Hit and Polydor Records as the album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships's second single that day.[10][11]

"Love It If We Made It" was written by all the members on The 1975, with production being handled by Healy and drummer George Daniel.[12] According to sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Good Soldier Songs, it is set in common time with a walking pace tempo of 90 beats per minute. The song is composed in the key of E major while Healy's vocals span a range of B₃ to B₅.[13] It is an electropop,[1] pop,[3] funk,[3] industrial[2] and new wave[2] song and features a strong drum beat and pulsing synths.[14] Pitchfork described the track as a "pop polemic" featuring "80s sophistipop melodies, soaring choral parts, [and] squealing filter disco riffs."[15]

The track's lyrics criticise the contemporary social climate and touch on issues such as racism and police brutality.[16][14] They make frequent references to popular culture and politics such as the drowning of a three-year-old Syrian refugee in 2015, the death of rapper and singer Lil Peep in November 2017 due to an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers fentanyl and alprazolam, the US national anthem protests, the Donald Trump Access Hollywood tape and Kanye West's support of Trump. The lyric "the poetry is in the streets" is a reference to a line featured in many of The 1975's music videos but not as a lyric.[17] Upon the track's premiere, Healy described the song's chorus "I'd love it if we made it" as "quite generous or hopeful" in contrast with the rest of the song's serious content.[8] The Ringer echoed that statement, writing that "the song would be too bleak without it."[18]

"Love It If We Made It" was met with widespread critical acclaim with praise directed particularly toward's the song's lyrics. Thomas Smith of NME called the song "pulsating", and founds its lyrics "eye-popping", calling them an outward look at society and its "endless fuckery".[17] Jamieson Cox of Pitchfork named it Best New Track, calling it "an airing of grievances large and small" that summarises the current state of the world. Cox also said that Healy "turns out one of the most impassioned vocal performances of his career here" and that the song "suggests you can always find a way to keep going, even when you're drowning in the planet's collective misery".[15] Clash's Robin Murray called the track "a downcast, gloriously self-reverential piece of outsider pop."[19]

David Sackllah, writing for Consequence of Sound, called the track one of the best from the album and added that "Healy doesn’t provide the solution to the constant struggles of our times but offers a resilient glimpse of hope."[20] The Line of Best Fit's Claire Biddles echoed that sentiment, adding that "the music is also formidable: each electronic whoosh and whizz is like digital overspill from the heady whole."[21] Steven Hyden of Uproxx named the song one of the best of the month of July, stating that "this song slaps."[22] Sarah Jamieson, writing for DIY, commended the track's lyrics and called the track "vital". She concluded that "modernity may have failed us, but if this new offering says anything, it's that The 1975 won’t let it get away that easy."[23]

The first video for the song was a vertical video in 16:9 format released through Spotify on 12 August 2018 after having been teased on the band's Instagram account.[39][40] The official video for the song was directed by Adam Powell with lighting and conceptual design being designed by Tobias Rylander. It was released on 15 October 2018 and features the colourful silhouettes of the band members and fans from the vertical video also intercut by numerous news events.[41][42]

The video begins with a plastic bag floating in the sea. As Healy sings "Saying controversial things just for the hell of it", a picture of Milo Yiannopoulos appears on the screen and soon after the lines "selling melanin", footage of people battering each other during the Black Friday sales is displayed, thus commenting simultaneously on consumerism on the perceived hypocrisy of white people darkening their skin while racism is still alive. This immediately leads onto phone-shot footage of the suffocation of Eric Garner. During the lines "Start with misdemeanours and we’ll make a business out of them", footage of the prison industrial complex is shown. A flash of footage from the Westboro Baptist Church is displayed as Healy sings "truth is only hearsay" and an image of Harvey Weinstein is shown during the lines "modernity has failed us".

An image of Healy taking a selfie is displayed during the lines "poison me daddy", immediately followed by a clip of the cleanup of the 2018 Salisbury Attack, followed by footage of the London riots, which killed five people is shown. During the song's reference to the death of Alan Kurdî, images of his corpse are displayed and images of Lil Peep are shown as Healy references his death in the song. The second use of the line "modernity has failed us" is accompanied by footage of Grenfell Tower burning. Healy and backing dancers then perform the dance from the music video of Michael Jackson's song "The Way You Make Me Feel", referencing 'the MTV generation'. An image of Brett Kavanaugh is displayed during the lines "liberal kitsch" and one of Donald Trump is displayed during the lines "I moved on her like a bitch". Footage of protests against the president are shown during the lines "excited to be indicted" and pictures of Kanye West with Trump are displayed during the lines "Thank you, Kanye, very cool!" three seconds before footage of the World Trade Center attacks are shown. The video ends with a ‘slide to power off’ message from the screen of an iPhone after images of The 1975 fans and Healy himself are shown. A list of various organizations and movements including #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and It Gets Better are displayed after the end of the video.[43]

Patrick Hosken of MTV called the video "another staggeringly beautiful music video from The 1975" and a "sparkling vision of life in 2018".[44] Tom Connick of NME opined that it is a "blindingly colourful run-through of current affairs, pop culture and the spaces where the two collide".[45] The site later named the video one of the best of 2018.[46]