10 Famous Musicians Who Just Do The Same Weird Thing Every Time

There's a bizarre obsession that musicians have with pushing the envelope. Once any major success has been achieved it becomes a point of principle to work out exactly what got them into that position and, no matter what it was, stop relying on it in all future releases. Finding the "new sound" is usually way more important than remembering why people bought the old one.

But, as decisions in the music industry go, this one rarely makes any actual sense. Experiments in new directions and personas are fraught with disaster and, even if you do manage to pull it off, you run the risk of alienating the fanbase because "wow they really suck now, I guess". Your comfort zone might be boring, but nobody goes broke sitting in it.

However, some artists concoct such a bizarre trademark that it sneaks its way into all their releases without them even realizing it. A dirty habit, a creative crutch, sometimes even just a nervous tick, the human brain's a weird machine made even weirder when it's trying to maintain a music empire.

One of the strangest phenomenons in modern music concerns British nu-wave, synth-pop, electro-rock, alt-funk ensemble The 1975. Specifically, how frontman Matty Healy has, apparently inadvertently, used the same phrase in virtually every single song he's written.

Speaking in an interview he insisted that while the focus of the band's songs wasn't predominantly about girls, he'd fallen into a habit of framing things from their perspective an inordinate amount of times during the writing process. This isn't just something that crops up frequently, it is almost every single song.

For those counting, The 1975 have used the exact lyric "she said" in no less than 28 times in 21 songs.

Lost Boys, Scary Monsters, The City, Antichrist, Woman, Undo, Sex, Milk, Chocolate, So Far (It's Alright), Heart Out, Robbers, She Way Out, A Change of Heart, She's American, The Sound, Paris, TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME, I Couldn't Be More In Love, Me & You Together Song, and If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know).

Their latter two there are from their upcoming 2020 album Notes on a Conditional Form, showing the band have no plans to ditch the gimmick.