The 1975, Oh Caroline | FIERCE Pop + Rock 🔥🤘

In the 5^th edition of FIERCE Pop + Rock 🔥🤘(2023), we highlight “Oh Caroline” performed by The 1975. 

Bring on the bold, FIERCE tracks! FIERCE Pop + Rock 🔥🤘 provides background information and insight into pop, rock, and metal songs that raise eyebrows and stir the pot.  Featured records can be classic or brand new. In the 5^th  edition of FIERCE Pop + Rock 🔥🤘 (2023), we explore 🎵 “Oh Caroline” performed by 🎙 The 1975.

“I’ve been suicidal / You’ve been gone for weeks / If I’m undecided, will you decide for me…” Yikes, that is dark, 🎙 Matthew Healy. Anytime a song commences with suicidal thoughts, it is serious.  The thing is, 🎵 “Oh Caroline”, a highlight from the 2022 🎙 The 1975 album, 💿 Being Funny in a Foreign Language, doesn’t sound dark musically.  The production (Healy, 🎛 George Daniel, and Jack Antonoff) is slick – incredibly bright, embracing a major key as opposed to minor.  Yet, this love has consumed the character in obsessive fashion, so much so he’s considered offing himself.

“Getting suicidal? It’s honestly not for me,” he asserts in the second verse.  That is a relief but there is more to come that further raises eyebrows. “I’m gettin’ on my nerves by gettin’ on my knees / Getting cucked, I don’t need it.” There is a lot to unpack. By cucked, Healy is referencing cuckold, which adds to the extreme of the record. Furthermore, the “gettin’ on my knees” opens up another can of worms, one that seems to have little to do with faith (Healy isn’t religious) but rather sex too (The Genius’ believe it to be a bisexual experience).  Giving this fierce rock record more lightness, sort of is the bridge, where Healy asserts, “Oh, I’ve tried to find / Another name a thousand times / But the only one that rhymes (Always on my mind) / Is ‘Oh, Caroline!’” That makes sense within the narrative that Healy constructs, but also, the front man has been clear that was the fictional name/character that worked perfectly for this song. One of The 1975’s best, methinks!

🎙 The 1975 • 💿 Being Funny in a Foreign Language • 🏷 Dirty Hit • 📅 2022

 The 1975, “Oh Caroline”: FIERCE Pop + Rock 🔥🤘 No. 5 (2023) [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; Dirty Hit; Conna Lee, Madelin Berry, anna-m. w., Johan  Duran, RODNAE Productions via Pexels; Pete Linforth via Pixabay]