The 1975’s ‘Somebody Else’ Joins Spotify’s Billions Club

The 1975 are the newest members of Spotify’s Billions Club. The Manchester band’s 2016 hit “Somebody Else” has racked up a billion plays on the streaming platform, becoming their first song to reach that threshold.

“Somebody Else” was released in February 2016 as an advance single from the 1975’s sophomore album I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful but so unaware of it. The song has reached the billion-stream benchmark just days after the album’s 10th anniversary. In a retrospective recently published at Stereogum, critic Chris DeVille cited “Somebody Else” as a highlight of the album, praising it as “wistful chillwave balladry” with some of frontman Matty Healy’s best lyrics, such as “I’m looking through you/ While you’re looking through your phone.”

Though it was one of the first songs the band revealed from I like it when you sleep, “Somebody Else” was the last song written for the album. Healy scrawled the lyrics in the backseat of a cab in Los Angeles while working through the jealousy and guilt associated with a recent breakup. He later told Coup de Main that he weaves personal experiences like that into his lyrics as a form of catharsis and self-understanding: “Once I put it in a song, I can objectively think about it – it exists outside of me and I can make sense of it a bit more.”

In the memorable “Somebody Else” music video, Healy makes out with himself in a car. “I had to shoot a love scene with a guy dressed as me. It’s 2016, there are no fears about that but it was an intense creative process,” he told the BBC at the time. “It was a collaboration between me and Tim (Mattia, the director) and it was surreal. We had to shoot almost two or three videos because it goes back on itself.”

“Somebody Else” was one of the 1975’s biggest hits at U.S. radio, hitting the top 10 on multiple rock and alternative charts. It’s been certified as 2x Platinum in the U.S. and U.K.

Buy 1975’s I Like It When You Sleep… here.