The 1975 are once again absolutely everywhere following their latest album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language and, as a result, so is the Matty Healy autotune meme.
With the band currently on a massive world tour entitled, ‘At Their Very Best’, the Wilmslow lads have been taking the internet by storm. Well, to be more accurate, their ever-eccentric frontman has.
Anyone who has watched a 1975 live performance, interview or music video in the last decade or so knows that Healy has always been a character — it’s part of the group’s overall charm — and he’s been by no means too shy to lean into the persona further in recent months.
We don’t imagine you’ve made it onto the internet recently without seeing at least one Matty Healy autotune clip but there are now so many that people are putting together compilations. Enjoy.
From joking about people’s sub-par seats in various digitised octaves and reacting to the type of cigarettes people are throwing on stage, to simply calling himself hot, the Matt Healy autotuned pre-amble before ‘TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME’ has become a genuine highlight for fans attending the show.
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As you can see, on multiple occasions during a breakdown in the live version of ‘I Like America & America Likes Me’, he also manages to turn alerting members of the crowd to other fans falling down into a less serious interjection.
Undoubtedly the most iconic and viral 1975 autotune of all is the now infamous “don’t like menthols” moment, which has gone on to become an almost inescapable TikTok sound at this point.
Not only have people quickly fallen in love with this random little improvisation but, somewhat annoyingly, it is such an earworm that you’re rendered powerless to repeat it for hours on end.
Seriously, they can’t get enough — not that they have any say in the matter.
In fact, people are so obsessed with these clips at the minute that they have now started a subsequent trend where people rank their favourite Matty Healy autotune memes from best to worst.
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Don’t agree with this blokes order but we’re all entitled to our opinion:
Whether it’s being mentioned on BBC Radio One by Greg James or being officially branded the one of the greatest 1975 lyrics of all time,
The meme has become so ubiquitous that Healy has even been acknowledging in his set, with fans losing their minds every time they hear “don’t like menthols” in real life.
The 1975 have not only been one of the biggest bands to come out of Manchester—well, Cheshire, really (his Matty’s words not ours)—but they are currently one of the biggest things on the planet and have been for some time, so it’s not much of a surprise that these daft little moments took off like they did.
Most importantly, however, coverage of the tour seems to absolute everywhere; you only have to watch for yourself to see how much fans are loving the performances and we can’t for them to rock up at the Apollo in January.
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We’ll leave you to sort your own Matty Healy autotune ranking and, whilst you’re here, seeing the man himself walking around Manchester and waxing lyrical about the city isn’t a bad watch either:
‘The average cost of a pint’ in the UK by region, according to the latest data
Danny Jones
Does it feel like pints keep getting more and more expensive almost every week at this point? Yes. Yes, it does, and while you can’t expect a city as big as Manchester to be one of the cheapest places to get one in the UK, we do often wonder how it compares to other parts of the country.
Well, as it happens, someone has recently crunched the numbers for us across the nation, breaking down which regions pay the most and the least for their pints.
The data has been examined by business management consultancy firm, CGA Strategy, using artificial intelligence and information from the latest Retail Price Index figures to find out what the ‘average cost of a pint’ is down south, up North and everywhere in between.
While the latest statistics provided by the group aren’t granular enough to educate us on Greater Manchester’s pint game exactly, we can show you how our particular geographic region is looking on the leaderboard at the moment.
That’s right, we Mancunians and the rest of the North West are technically joint mid-table when it comes to the lowest average cost of a pint, sharing the places from 3rd to 8th – according to CGA, anyway.
Powered by consumer intelligence company, NIQ (NielsenIQ) – who also use AI and the latest technology to deliver their insights – we can accept it might seem like it’s been a while since you’ve paid that little for a pint, especially in the city centre, but these are the stats they have published.
Don’t shoot the messenger, as they say; unless, of course, they’re trying to rob you blind for a bev. Fortunately, we’ve turned bargain hunting at Manchester bars into a sport at this point.
We might not boast the lowest ‘average’ pint cost in the UK, but we still have some bloody good places to keep drinking affordable.
London tops the charts (pretends to be shocked)
While some of you may have scratched your eyes at the supposed average pint prices here in the North West, it won’t surprise any of you to see that London leads the way when it came to the most expensive pint when it came to average cost in the UK.
To be honest, £5.44 doesn’t just sound cheap but virtually unheard of these days.
CGA has it that the average cost of a beer in the British capital is actually down 15p from its price last September, but as we all know, paying upwards of £7 for a pint down that end of the country is pretty much par for the course the closer you get to London.
Yet more reason you can be glad you live around here, eh? And in case you thought you were leaving this article with very little, think again…
Benson Boone has announced a headline gig in Manchester – and it’s a big one
Danny Jones
American pop sensation and unrivalled king of unnecessary front flips, Benson Boone, has just announced his first-ever headline Manchester arena gig as part of a new arena tour.
The solo artist and acrobatic chart-topper has seen a meteoric rise in the US and, as is usually the case across the Atlantic, he’s become increasingly popular over here too.
Benson may have performed here in Manchester before as part of the 2024 MTV EMAs and for a small show at The Deaf Institute, but now big fans have the added Boone of getting to watch a standalone show at one of Europe’s leading indoor entertainment venues.
Announced on Friday, 30 May, the 22-year-old will be making his way across the pond from Washington for a limited run of UK concerts, with a date at Co-op Live arena being one of just five dates.
Extending his ‘American Heart Tour’ ahead of the release of his eponymous sophomore record, with this autumn leg, Co-op Live will mark his individual visit to 0161.
The Grammy-nominated artist has earned several nods of recognition already for his first album, Fireworks & Rollerblades, which was released just last spring.
He has been described as among the current trend of male singers who fit into the American Idol and ‘Voice audition pop’ genre (a term recently coined online), along with the likes of Teddy Swims, Shawn Mendes, Alex Warren and others.
Regardless of the slightly tongue-in-cheek term, he’s become a huge hit around the world and landing him is still a big coup for the venue that has already welcomed similarly massive pop contemporaries like Swims, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and more.
In case you’re wondering just how big a deal he is over in the States, even this early in his career, his domestic headline dates sold out in seconds, quite literally…
The last time he visited Co-op Live was to perform at the most recent MTV EMAs
Benson Boone is coming to Manchester on Monday, 27 October and will be playing just two other British venues: The O2 in London (two nights) and the Utilita Arena in Birmingham.
Safe to say you don’t want to miss this one if you like soaring vocals and lots of flipping.
General admission tickets go live at 10am on Thursday, 5 June, but Co-op Members can gain access via the arena’s official pre-sale window from the same time on Tuesday (3 Jun).
Danny Jones -
10th December 2022 
