Who Is Matty Healy?

In January, the thirty-four-year-old British rock star Matty Healy woke up on a couch in his house, except it was not his house, it was a stage set at the O2 Arena, in London, and twenty thousand people were there with him, screaming. His band, the 1975, stood in position among wood-panelled walls and framed family photos, and Healy—skinny, in a close-cut suit and a tie, black curls slicked back behind his ears—rose and dramatically blinked at the lights, took a swig from a flask, and sat down at a piano. Then he lit a cigarette and began to play the jittery riff that opens the band’s latest album, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language.” “You’re making an aesthetic out of not doing well / And mining all the bits of you you think you can sell,” he sang, taking long pulls from a bottle of red wine as the audience roared.