The 1975’s George Daniel has insisted that he doesn’t want his pursuit of a solo career to bring him more attention.
The drummer, songwriter and producer launched his solo career last week, when he shared the debut single ‘Screen Cleaner’ and officially marked his new venture into the electronic dance genre. It arrived via dh2 – the electronic imprint he spearheads via The 1975’s label, Dirty Hit.
Now, in a new interview with The Face, Daniel has reflected on his decision to launch a solo venture and explained that he hasn’t done so in the hopes of bringing more attention to himself.
“I have a huge amount of imposter syndrome with this stuff – I think about this every day, like ‘Oh, this is the guy who plays drums and produces this band, they’re successful, now he decides he’s going to do a label because every other video on Instagram is a DJ right now’ – that’s my nightmare,” he told the outlet.
He continued, adding that he doesn’t want to be seen in the same way as his 1975 bandmate Matty Healy because of the new material. “The last thing I want people to think is like ‘Oh, George wanted more attention.’ Absolutely not. Matty can have everything!”
While Daniel’s new approach to songwriting is a far throw from the type of music he does with The 1975, he did explain that the two projects had a similar approach – especially when the band was first starting out.
“The way we made music initially was actually very dance music in its method. Not necessarily in what it sounded like – but we didn’t really know what a song structure was, we didn’t know any chords, we were very much making sounds that looped, and the peaks and troughs were from repetition or something dropping out,” he said.
“It wasn’t traditional songwriting, because we literally didn’t know how to do that. At this point, I’m 16, Matty’s 17, we’re really finding our feet – we didn’t know what the band was gonna sound like. So this is a really nice full circle moment.”
As well as making waves with both his solo material and work with The 1975, Daniel has also seen his work with fiancée Charli XCX making its way onto the charts – collaborating with her on her hit album ‘Brat’.
He earned co-writing and production credits on the LP, an is credited on ‘Club Classics’ – where Charli sings “I wanna dance with George” – and the viral hit ‘Apple’.
Discussing how the album launched at the same time as his dance label imprint on Dirty Hit, he told the outlet: “It’s quite exciting – this is the summer of a lot of changes in my life, which is really cool. It’s not intimidating, because ‘Brat’ is… why would I compare?
“That would be the most futile exercise. I’m really happy and proud of her and proud of my input in [her] record. To be honest, that gave me a bit of confidence.”
In the run up to the solo single, Daniel had been previewing his new material throughout the summer, including appearances with Charli at Glastonbury 2024, Boiler Room New York, Ibiza’s Amnesia and The Floor with Jamie xx at Venue MOT in London.
The ’75 drummer co-produced The Japanese House‘s 2019 debut album ‘Good At Falling’ and its 2023 follow-up ‘In The End It Always Does’. Additionally, he has worked with the likes of Caroline Polachek, Beabadoobee and No Rome.
A launch party for dh2 took place in London last month, with performances from Daniel, Kelly Lee Owens, Oscar Farrell and TimFromTheHouse. Upon announcing the event, Daniel wrote: “I am so happy and excited to announce my new label dh2. Let’s go.”
As for The 1975, the band released their fifth and most recent studio album, ‘Being Funny In A Foreign Language’, in 2022. They are currently on an “indefinite hiatus” from live performances after wrapping up their latest run of shows. Back in March, Healy shared an ambient solo track called ‘Loads Of Crisps’.
