Everything Everything frontman Jonathan Higgs has spoken to NME about the 10th anniversary of their seminal album ‘Get To Heaven’ – and how it proved profoundly foreboding of today’s political climate.
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The Manchester indie veterans’ Stuart Price-produced third album was released in 2015, peaking at Number Seven in the UK Albums Chart and featuring the singles ‘Distant Past’, ‘No Reptiles’ and ‘Regret’.
The critically-acclaimed record was, as Higgs explained to NME at the time, made in the shadow of 2014’s conflicting tide of information, an era he called “the most violent year of our lives”, and “[what] makes me feel wretched and confused and anxious without having to know who’s right and who’s wrong”.
Reviewing the album, NME concluded: “Few records released in 2015 will feel as true to the times as this one. Their contemporaries might have long since buried their heads in the sand, but Everything Everything are up to their eyes in dread.”
Now, with a vinyl reissue of the album just released ahead of a UK and Ireland anniversary tour this winter, Higgs has spoken to NME about how ‘Get To Heaven’ has grown more prescient in this time of heightened extremism, division and online confusion.
“It’s 10 years, so I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot recently,” he said. “It was pretty evident that 2015 was a big year of change across this country and quite a lot of the Western world. We wrote the record before Brexit happened, before Trump got in. In 2014, there was a lot of terrorism going on, and I was very wrapped up in the rolling news. I got terrorised by what they were doing, and that was the intention: to spread fear and a kind of hopelessness.”
Higgs continued: “There was this rise of radical beliefs and actions. Every day, the news would present it in a way I’d never experienced before. That was combined with the Tories and austerity being very much here. I was spending a lot of time on 4Chan and bits of Reddit, where I was seeing more and more of these types of ideas growing.
“It’s what we’d now call the alt-right, but I was first starting to notice it. Back then, it felt very fringe and new to me. Now it’s mainstream and in the White House.”
Check out our full interview with Higgs below, where he tells us about the evolution and repetition of extremism, what doom-scrolling can do to your brain, and Everything Everything’s plans for the future.
NME: Hello, Jonathan. So 2014 was a pretty full-on year. What do you remember about the version of extremism you were seeing at the time?
Jonathan Higgs: “I always thought of it as a rehash of this populist stuff that comes back around every time there’s a wave of discontent, but this felt very new. I didn’t know how to think about it or counter it. I was arguing with these people, and it didn’t work in the way that it used to. I was a very disturbed individual during that year, and I felt very strongly that something was about to happen.
“It affected all the songs – songs about charlatan demagogue leaders appearing and taking over. There was stuff about becoming radicalised. I was trying to put myself in the mindset of ISIS and thinking, ‘What would it take for me to do that? Would I be so different if I was pushed?’ It was a concoction of fear, anger and recognising a growing revolution that has come to pass.
“The record gets more and more prescient as time goes on, but the seeds of all that surrounds us now is on there. You’d be forgiven if we wrote it after. We were playing in Newcastle the night of the Bataclan shooting. I remember coming off stage and just feeling completely insane that I was just out there singing about this stuff, and it was happening just across the water.”
What did that stir up inside you as a songwriter?
“It definitely opened up a real feeling of – without sounding too ‘positive’ – a ‘magical’ way of being while creating, because you’re not beholden to all your usual shit. You can be anything, even something you find horrific. It’s really liberating to have those voices coming out of your mouth. People react to it because they get the same feeling I had of taking away the safety net.”
With you reacting to violence in its different forms, do you feel that it would be as strong today in this age of doom-scrolling?
“No. The things that stand out now are displays of empathy or humility, old-fashioned virtues. They’re the things that are actually rare now. Even sincerity is interesting in a way that it hasn’t been in a long time. Social media is such a fanfare of extremes that you can’t possibly shock. You don’t need to.
“You can’t even believe anything anymore. That’s the 2020s. It’s difficult to know what’s true, or even what you’re looking at. More and more, offline stuff is the interesting thing about art: getting above or around this horrible, oppositional culture and just trying to exist without it.”
And now that fascism has shaped a digital realm and narrative where it can’t be seen to fail?
“We’re staring down the barrel of a very possible right-wing government here in a few years’ time. Part of me kind of wants it, because I want it to be shown up and kicked out the door. Until it fails, you just can’t convince people that it’s not the answer. It’s intoxicatingly simple; it feels easy, it feels right, to just go with this childish way of being. It’s possible because it’s easy.
“It’s easy to blame and to think about the self, but it’s difficult to live in a community. That’s how it’s always been, and has always been the great dichotomy of living. Do you think about the self or the group? It’s always easier to think about the self.”
Do you have any hope for the future at all?
“Well, I’ve just advocated getting the Nazis in to see how shit they are! I don’t know how hopeful that is, but my answer is actually: no, not really. A shift in attitude is probably due for a lot of people. I take it all a bit less seriously than I used to. I do think this stuff is bad, but how bad can it get? I’m so used to things going wrong and votes going the wrong way, that what can really happen next? What are they actually gonna do? I lost faith in a lot of things over the last decade, and I don’t see them coming back. So I don’t think in those terms any more.”
How are you feeling about occupying this headspace again to play this album in full?
“I relish it now. I miss it. It’s gonna make me feel alive. It’s true all over again: we are once again staring down the barrel of the rise of a demagogue. It hasn’t gone away, it’s got 800 times worse, but the tunes are still banging and everyone understands me now!”
Do you feel like living in the world of this album again could inspire new material?
“It’s yet to come, but I already predict we’re going to come off this tour and go, ‘Right, let’s do ‘Get To Heaven Part 2’. I don’t know if it would be redundant to try and recreate that. We did it then when it was all new. Now everyone makes a record about how shit those guys are. We’ve got to think ahead, but I’m very proud that we put that record out when we did, and of how much it still means now.”
The ‘Get To Heaven’ 10th anniversary reissue edition is out now. Everything Everything’s ‘Get To Heaven’ 10th anniversary 2025 UK and Ireland tour dates are below. Visit here for tickets and more information.
NOVEMBER
27 – Barrlowland Ballroom, Glasgow
28 – O2 Academy, Leeds
29 – Aviva Studios, Manchester
DECEMBER
01 – Rock City, Nottingham
02 – NX, Newcastle
03 – Prospect Building, Bristol
05 – O2 Academy, Birmingham
08 – 3Olympia, Dublin
The post Everything Everything on 10 years of ‘Get To Heaven’: “The things that stand out now are displays of empathy or humility, old-fashioned virtues” appeared first on NME.