The guys are back in town with a new tour and an upcoming record. They were in Paris (photos) in early April and we met them to ask some serious questions. What can we expect from this young blood? We’ll try to answer any questions you may have.
RockUrLife, We Will Punk You and Above The Noise just had a really instructive meeting with Luke, Calum, Michael, and Ashton. We met a friendly, professional and passionate band and they shared their new approach to music with us.
5 Seconds of Summer ©
To start, welcome back to Paris ! The last time you came here, you played in a arena full of 15000 people, tonight, you’ll be playing to less than 1000 people. Did you guys felt like you needed to come back to a smaller scale in order to take a fresh new start ?
Ashton Irwin : There’s 3 answers I can dive into.
The first one being, we need to connect with our fans because we haven’t played a venue like this in a long time. I think it’s a special thing for a band to do. We were thinking back to when we were young and our favorite band would play a smaller venue, it would be crazy, you’d do whatever you can to get a ticket. So there’s that nature that comes with it, you know, in recognizing that we haven’t been to many of these cities in a long time.
Second, the technical term would be a slight rebrand of 5 Seconds of Summer, but that doesn’t satisfy me creatively. I think what we are trying to do is evolve and become one of the most forward-thinking modern rock bands, because this band, I believe and we believe, has the potential to achieve that, in the way Coldplay have done it, Maroon 5 have done it, bands that thousands adore around planet earth. We really look up to bands like that.
Third, we have kind of focused on the way everything is looking from a new perspective. We’re taking more time with our merchandise, with the stage design, we’re taking more time with the way the whole show looks and feels. I think the only way to incubate a truly great live experience is in a small place first and give it space to grow into a bigger experience for our fans.
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You created a few years ago: Hi Or Hey Records. Is there anything going on with it now? Are you gonna sign more bands soon?
Luke Hemmings: Eh, well, I think so, at some point. We signed Hey Violet with Hi Or Hey Records which has been awesome for us and, hopefully, for them. A lot of the people that we will sign, and Hey Violet as well, was very much an inspiration to us. Obviously we saw something of ourselves in them and something we could kinda build a brand with and take on tour and almost I guess show the road a little bit, even though they’ve been a band longer than us, but yeah… I think you’ll see some more people on the label! It’s just that we’re really busy and it’s hard to find.. . They have to be really cool and they have to really stand out and inspire us creatively for us to want to put the time and money into I suppose.
Ashton Irwin: Yeah! With Hey Violet, we spent a lot of face to face time with them as friends so… To sign someone else would take a lot of our energy and we have our own band to think about as well. We’re not quite at the stage where we’re like a classic act and we can just sit back and sign a couple bands…
Calum Hood: One day.
Ashton Irwin: It’s exactly what Luke said we like to dive into whoever we partnership with creatively and it needs to feel important and inspiring for sure.
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About the new record: we already heard Want You Back. There’s a lot of Pop in it. It’s lyrically deep/ rich. Can we expect the record to be Pop as well?
Ashton: I’m really interested and intrigued by the word « Pop » and especially here. Starting with the answer to that question, I’ll have to speak about our motivation to make our music more diverse and lyrically understandable to more people because we’re a global band and we’re ambitious so we want to end up in many countries. It’s funny to use Pop here because we use less « he ho he ho » like all that type of bullshit on this record. I think our lyrical content is a little more focused and dark. I think that Want You Back is a Pop song at heart because we are Pop writers. I don’t want anyone to get that wrong: we’re Pop songwriters. It’s important to us.
Sonically, we’re diving into different areas. We really want to serve the songs. We’re not a young and hesitant band anymore. We’re adult men (laugh). We’re being smart about the way we track our guitars, drums, and vocals. We’re also multi-instrumentalists. We’re diving into using more keys, synthesizers, drum pads… If you compare us to bands like The 1975 or Twenty One Pilots, those guys are using a lot of tracks. We looked to those kinds of bands and we were like: « we don’t have to put a track like that, we need to play it. If we are capable. »
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The music video of Want You Back kinda looks like the cover of Somewhere New. Is it done on purpose?
Luke: Oh, maybe subliminally. It wasn’t in the discussions we had…but the boxes and lights are for the new aesthetics of the album. The boxes are representatives of the feeling of the songs… But you know, maybe somewhere way back… I think we moved on from that, we don’t have a real discussion on Somewhere New, but…
Michael: I love the comparison. I like so, I will say yes.
Luke: I didn’t think about it.
Michael: Why not!
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Last album was mainly recorded in England. You made this last one in Sweden. Why such a choice? Do you really need to be that far from home to write new songs?
Ashton: We established our basement in Los Angeles because life could no loger just be on the road. It’s hard in terms of determination, in the sens you always try to do something great or you fail yourself, you fail tour band. I do think you need that competitive element in music. I don’t know why. Maybe that’s just me individually but when a record label or someone pays for me to go to Sweden and write a song, I need to write the best fucking song I can. ‘Cause I’m grateful to be there. I’m also focus just on music. I often struggled to write in L.A ’cause my friends were there and I’d be often intoxicated or something from the night before. It’s the big mess. I think Sweden was interesting for us and determined the process to deliver the best we could do.
Luke: We definitely wrote and recorded a bunch of songs in L.A ’cause that’s where we live. But doing things like going to Sweden, writing with new people…Even if it scared us a little bit, it was really important to bring back and write our own bases.
Ashton: Looking at the whole thing from far away, everything makes more sens. So, Yes, I think that’s important.
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ABOVE THE NOISE 