As the maddening rush of Christmas ensues and another year comes to its inevitable to a close, it’s natural to reflect on the achievements of the past 12 months. We here at the Tone Deaf office are feeling pretty productive, proud of the work we’ve done bringing you the latest in Australian and international music news.
However, it’s been tough holding onto that feeling of productivity and pride since we had a look at Songkick’s annual wrap-up of the year’s hardest-working bands, a title which was taken out by Los Angeles favourites Local Natives last year, after the group clocked an impressive 188 shows and covered a staggering 192,486km.
This year, it’s all about Mancunian quartet The 1975, who’ve not only had one of their hottest years to date, but put in the hard yards on the touring circuit, earning the title of the hardest-working band of 2014 after playing 195 shows and travelling 249,724km (for context, that’s about two-thirds of the way to the moon).
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If you’re not feeling lazy and shiftless just yet, it may despair you to know that the band managed to average a gig every 1.8 days during 2014, outdoing notable road dogs like Future Islands, Metronomy, Bastille, and Jake Bugg, as well as all of the previous years’ winners, like Ed Sheeran, Foster The People, and Vampire Weekend.
“Touring this past year has been a really humbling experience. Our album was pretty much the story of the last decade of our lives, to see so many people around the world connecting with it has been incredible,” the band told Songkick. “We are very proud of our fans, they really understand what we are doing and the shows are an extension of that feeling.”
Having completed six laps of the Earth and visited 29 countries, we’re actually surprised the band was able to make a statement at all. That said, props should be given to the likes of Future Islands, who came in second for the amount of shows played with 159, tying with 2010 winners Vampire Weekend.
