5SOS on their goals: ‘We want to be more than just a band to our fans’

MarkMeets can reveal their new album ‘Sounds Good Feels Good’ has a more experienced sound.

For every boy-meets-girl, let’s-party song on their second album Sounds Good Feels Good there is another which explores the darker side of the human condition, the anxieties and insecurities.

Those songs may be cloaked in rock guitars, driving rhythms, singalong pop melodies and a dose of good old Australian humour but the four young musicians from Sydney’s western suburbs are also indulging in musical therapy.

“This friend of mine said when you are a musician and you are touring all the time and get to the level we are, you’re an astronaut. You go up and then you come back down to earth and you can’t really explain what is like up in space. Only your fellow astronauts get it,” Michael says.

“We try to talk to each other and try to pull each other through. You realise there are huge ups and huge downs. And it gets tiring, you know.

“With relationships, it’s hard. People forget about you at home because you have been away for so long and it becomes this thing where you have just to keep going and not fall off the rails.

“The last song on the album is Carry On, which is straight-up saying you know it is going to get better. Sticking it through is always going to be worth it, no matter what.”

The “difficult” second album sounds crunchier than their debut but also more cohesive.

Instead of writing with a clutch of the world’s hitmakers in various studios throughout America and Europe, the band based themselves in Los Angeles for three months and bunkered down with their producer mate John Feldmann and co-writers Joel and Benji Madden.

Their mission was to write songs that not only made the fans “feel good” but struck a deeper connection with the “new broken scene” they describe in the single She’s Kinda Hot.

It’s a funny, quirky pop rock number but the lyrics address everything from low self-esteem to mental illness.

“We are trying to bring our fans what they need in their lives. I think this whole fan base naming age is a little bit dull and boring and shallow, it’s just a hashtag,” Irwin says.

“I want people to feel something. It’s more about connecting them with us. We have created 14 characters for 14 songs on the album and those characters are little skerricks of us and what we feel in the songs.

“It’s a real honest thing that we want to be more than a band to our fans. And it’s not meant to be a marketing thing or anything like that.

“The band got big so quickly off the first album and we went and looked at our own issues individually, the fans’ issues and we said we need to put on our thinking caps and think about what we are singing and expressing.

“We are trying to bring our fans what they need in their lives. I think this whole fan base naming age is a little bit dull and boring and shallow, it’s just a hashtag.”

He went onto add that connecting to their fans through the lyrics on this offering is the most important thing about it: “I want people to feel something. It’s more about connecting them with us. We have created 14 characters for 14 songs on the album and those characters are little skerricks of us and what we feel in the songs. It’s a real honest thing that we want to be more than a band to our fans. And it’s not meant to be a marketing thing or anything like that.”

‘She’s Kinda Hot’ hitmakers 5 Seconds Of Summer will unleash their new album ‘Sounds Good Feels Good’ on October 23rd

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