Last night whilst you were all living your lives, Matt Healy (aka the singer from The 1975 who was actually born in 1989) threw a strop on Twitter. Healy took to the site to voice concerns over the similarities between the UK government’s desperate plea to get regular people to have an opinion on Brexit using some eye catching neon signs and some of his band’s own recent artistic masterpieces using the same medium.

For reference, this is the bastardising EU referendum video:

And to compare, here are the profound and thought provoking original artworks for I Like It When You Sleep for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It:

The illuminating photo series was commissioned for The 1975 but made by the Norwich based photographer David Drake. When you spend that amount of your famous actor parents’ money on getting someone who knows what they’re doing to create a uniquely monumental photo series of your song titles, you really don’t want any old government coming along and jacking your swag because that’s totally embarrassing.

However this isn’t the only example of creative theft surrounding the neon lamps, here are five unoriginal losers that have rudely ripped artwork from The 1975:

Las Vegas

Way back in the 40s and 50s, Las Vegas decided to light up it’s streets with a whole bunch of fabulous neon signs that were inspired by “I Like It When…” in eager preparation for the band’s arrival over sixty decades later. The buzzing city is weirdly home to the highest concentration of 1975 fans outside of Manchester.

Nobody knows quite how people in the olden days knew how or when the band would eventually come into fruition but we suspect it had something to do with lucky guesses and the sheer power of indie music.

Sex Shops

Although the third track on their second EP is literally called “Sex”, this neon theft scandal is potentially the worst of all listed examples due to the horrifically seedy nature. Stealing art in order to promote your filthy lifestyle is a disgusting form of appropriation and sex shop owners all over the world should be ashamed of themselves.

Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin’s collection of neon signs titled “I Promise To Love You” are very similar to that of The 1975’s except she made the creative decision to do them in her own handwriting instead so the band won’t sue. Some of them even have cutesy little hearts around them which we think is a particularly lazy way of trying to throw us of the trail.

If you carefully inspect that famous tent installation of hers where she lists absolutely everyone she’s ever slept with, then you’ll be able to find bassist Ross MacDonald’s name embroidered just the right of the entrance. It was probably during this presumably passionate union when she decided that she needed to harness the power of this iconic band in some bright way. 

Other creatives such as Jung Lee and Joseph Kosuth have also made artworks using the medium and it’s just not on.

Georges Claude

Not only was Georges Claude the revolutionary inventor of neon lighting but he was also a psychic and a massive 1975 fan. Although he was the first person to apply electrical discharge to a scaled tube pumped full of neon, he only did so after seeing a premonition of the future after accidentally electrocuting himself during experimentation. Getting fried from electricity is generally seen as a bad thing but if Claude wasn’t such a klutz then he wouldn’t have seen into the future and we wouldn’t have any neon lights at all, meaning that their artwork could’ve taken a completely different turn entirely.

Scottish Independence Debate Campaign

Oh, what’s this? A visually similar advert for a contextually similar campaign that was released two years prior to I Like It When You Sleep for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It? Well that’s embarrassing. After all that it turns out the government weren’t copying The 1975 at all and instead were merely referencing the Scottish Independence Debate Campaign from back in 2014.

Oops!

Still, our favourite bit in this whole neon fiasco is when Healy calls David Cameron a “massive Tory” as though he isn’t actually the current face of all tories. That’s the equivalent of big Dave turning around to go “you’re the singer of The 1975” which to be honest is actually pretty shit seeing as they’re definitely the most drab band to ever exist. Don’t really think that even our pig fucking prime minister is stupid enough to take a genuine fact as an insult.