The 1975

band formed in Wilmslow, Cheshire in 2002. The band consists of Matty Healy (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, primary songwriter), Adam Hann (lead guitar), Ross MacDonald (bass) and George Daniel (drums, primary producer). The band's name was inspired by a page of scribblings found in Healy's preowned copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac which was dated "1 June, The 1975".

The band members met in secondary school and first performed together as teenagers in 2002, before professionally releasing music in 2012 under the independent label Dirty Hit. From 2012 to 2013, they opened for several major acts and released a series of extended plays—Facedown, Sex, Music for Cars and IV—before releasing their UK chart-topping self-titled debut album (2013), which included the popular singles "Sex", "Chocolate" and "Robbers".

All of the band's albums hit No. 1 in the United Kingdom and charted in the Billboard 200, garnering critical praise and appearing in numerous publications' year-end and decade-end lists. Their second album, I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It (2016), also reached No. 1 in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and its box set received a nomination for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package at the 59th Grammy Awards. The band's third album, A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships (2018), received widespread acclaim and won British Album of the Year at the 2019 Brit Awards with its single "Give Yourself a Try" earning a nomination for Best Rock Song at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards. It was followed by Notes on a Conditional Form (2020) and Being Funny in a Foreign Language (2022) with the latter receiving a nomination for British Album of the Year at the 2023 Brit Awards.

Rolling Stone stated that the band has been at "the forefront of modern pop rock" since their debut, with Billboard declaring them "the most ambitious pop-rock band of their generation". Pitchfork has described them as a "band of friends" who "ascended from scrappy emo rockers to global superstars". Entertainment Weekly has characterised them as "British Phenoms", NME has proclaimed them as "Art Pop Heroes", and the BBC has called them "Modern Pop Icons". They have received several awards and nominations including four Brit Awards, two Ivor Novello Awards, as well as two nominations for the Mercury Prize and two nominations for Grammy Awards. In addition, they have been awarded "Band of the Decade" at the 2020 NME Awards.