Maximalism, mayhem and 5 Seconds of Summer

“Someone ripped up the dice at the end of one of the last shows; the dice is in someone’s house,” says 5 Seconds of Summer’s guitarist Michael Clifford.

“That was upsetting,” adds drummer Ashton Irwin. “That dice cost seven grand.”

They’re talking about the huge inflatable die, each side plastered with a fan-favourite song for the band to play, that was rolled out across the crowd every night of their last tour, The 5 Seconds of Summer Show.

Despite that tour only ending two years ago, when the band started posting pictures together again earlier this year, it was received as a reunion. “I feel like it’s throwing us off,” says Michael. “Like, wait, did we need to reunite?”

“Have you guys heard about the Mandela Effect?” adds Ashton, “Like in some alternate universe we did break up, and that’s a dimension that some people remember. Because we never broke up, we never went on a hiatus, and we never had a reason to reunite, because we’re always united.”

Rather than signalling the end of an era, The 5 Seconds of Summer Show pointed to the direction they’d be taking on their next record. The show bottled everything the band were great at, the stuff they did differently, like getting the crowd to pick the setlist via dice, acting out little skits to fill time between songs, as well as embracing nostalgia and the space they occupy between being a boyband and a ‘real’ band.

Their upcoming sixth album ‘Everyone’s A Star!’ takes on a similar quality. Aside from the dramatic aesthetic switch up, the record finds them in much different sonic territory, and thematically it sees the boys take on fame, fandom and beyond. For the first time in probably a decade, 5SOS are, on tape, leaning into the silliness that helped them break through originally, and injecting immense personality into their campaign.

“That’s so important to our brand,” says Ashton. “That’s actually why a lot of people like us, it’s not just the music, it’s our characters, it’s our brotherhood, it’s our journey together, and it’s a big part of why we enjoy it as well. We’re getting into, like, amateur-level improv right now. On our last tour, we were exploring more acting, more show building, more entertainment. We get a little bored of the same old rock show, same old play of our songs, and do a fake encore and see you later. We wanted more of a narrative, more of an explosive, creative, identifiable way of putting on shows. A lot of this new record is aligning with that realised higher purpose and direction.”

Three out of four members join us today, Ashton and Michael, plus frontman Luke Hemmings, all dialling in from Los Angeles, while we assume bassist Calum Hood is preoccupied with other rock star activities (we caught up with him later, don’t worry), all looking significantly fresher than the last time we met in 2022 when they were neck deep in touring and album promotions. Although it doesn’t seem they’ve had much of a rest since then.

“We’re getting into, like, amateur-level improv right now”

In the time since ‘5SOS5’s release, they’ve not only completed the 5 Seconds of Summer Show tour, but all four boys have put out solo projects, with Luke’s ‘boy’ and Ashton’s ‘Blood On The Drums’ dropping last year, while Calum’s ‘order CHAOS order’ and Michael’s ‘Sidequest’ arrived more recently. Each solo record (obviously) revealed what every member was bringing to the table, their personal tastes and skills. Behind the scenes, they were also cooking up 5SOS6.

“Obviously, we needed to live some life, to have some more experiences as individuals,” says Ashton. “And that was very, dare I say, cathartic, but it kind of realigned us creatively as a group. It got us excited to work together again. When your boys are missing you, you miss their skill sets and their way of dealing with any kind of problem that comes up, or anything you need, musically, lyrically, whatever. We definitely missed working with each other.”

“Everyone would come back after doing solo stuff and had learned a bunch of new things and had some new tools in the tool belt,” adds Luke. “I feel like, coming into the writing this album, everyone got to do their own thing. We had got a lot of that energy out, and it was all being pulled in such equal directions. There was such a want to push ourselves, the band, and try to find something new. I feel like on the fifth album, it was self-produced for the most part, and very cathartic in a different way. And this album we were just like, how can we get across that early 5SOS chaos? What does that look like now, with everything we’ve learned?”

After spending time away from recording and touring during the lockdown years, the band approached ‘5SOS5’ more introspectively, with most of the album finding the four-piece unpacking their decade growing up in the spotlight. They escaped to Joshua Tree and cracked on with it themselves. Lyrically, it was intimate and diaristic, while still sounding like wide-open stadium rock. It was a rocky period for 5 Seconds of Summer, but a necessary exercise that ultimately strengthened their bond.

“Without oversharing, behind the scenes, our whole universe had changed in terms of who we’d worked with and who we we’re working with, and people were coming and going from our team, and it really felt like we were the last four people on earth,” says Ashton. “It really felt like that when we went out to the desert and made an album together, and we were really interested in exploring all the things we had learned, whether it be Michael’s excellent production skills or exploring our songwriting capabilities and seeing how much we’ve learned over the years. You know, are we able to stand on our own? Are we able to create a body of work that’s interesting and impressive at the same time, just as four guys. I felt like the fifth album was more about doubling down on the band’s ability and the band’s trust to show up for each other through thick and thin. This new album is more us sharpening the blade and going for something that’s striking and different and exciting to us. We’re looking for a new creative high, especially in a contemporary sense. We’re going for up tempo party bangers. We’re going for a bit more of our old rock, emo thing at times, but rejuvenated with a modern mindset. It’s a totally different project, a totally different mindset and a total different acceptance of what’s happening to us creatively.”

“We had time to sculpt who we are as individual artists and get to bring it back to the band as a whole,” says Calum via email a few days later. “I definitely felt we needed something a little more explosive and abrupt. ‘5SOS5’ gave us a chance to become that with this album.”

“How can we get across that early 5SOS chaos? What does that look like now?”

Towards the end of the ‘5SOS5’ recording process, the boys had an itch that needed scratching – understandable, considering how heavy that year was – Michael notes they were already thinking about making a complete 180 shift. So they wrote ‘No. 1 Obsession’.

For the first time since perhaps 2015’s ‘Sounds Good, Feels Good’, 5SOS were bringing in proper pop punk references again. It isn’t just the chugging guitar and yelping vocals, but the lyrical content that recalls ‘Infinity On High’ era Fall Out Boy, with 5SOS recognising their positions as someone’s idols. While they’ve touched on the subject of fame briefly before (2020’s ‘No Shame’ chooses “I love the way you’re screaming my name” as its chorus refrain), it hasn’t felt as cheeky nor as specific to their experience as this.

“I feel like Fall Out Boy did one of the best jobs at making contemporary rock in a popular way, but also their lyricism and comment on celebrity, on being in a band, and their commentary on the life that they lived at the height of their success and career, and putting that into their pop songs was really amazing and exciting,” says Ashton, who immediately saw the similarities between the new tracks and Pete Wentz’ mid-2000s penmanship. 

“The core concept on the record is talking about our relationship with our fans, our relationship spiritually with the music we make, and our relationship with our live shows,” he continues. “So the core songs on the record for me are ‘Not OK’, ‘Everyone’s A Star’, ‘No. 1 Obsession’. A big part of it was to retain our rock edge, the band beneath the pop song. After you’ve seen thousands of people with your lyrics tattooed on them, you start to think a little differently about what you’re writing. I hope there’s a lyrical potency that can translate to key concepts of living more hopeful lives, more confidence for our fans, more self-esteem and more self-awareness. So it’s interesting, talking about those concepts, because it kind of is a double-sided mirror for us as a band and for the fans as fans.”

“We realised that our power is in being chameleons”

Like all great pop stars, 5 Seconds of Summer navigate the world with an awareness of the culture shifting around them. They knew what was coming next had to be their boldest statement yet, and as such, they invited two of the last year’s biggest hitmakers into the writers’ room. Julian Bunetta, who put his name to Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’, Gracie Abrams’ ‘That’s So True’, and Teddy Swims’ ‘Lose Control’, and John Ryan, whose production discography includes Sabrina’s ‘Short n’ Sweet’ and ‘Man’s Best Friend’ (plus nearly every song One Direction put out in their lifetime), were the primary collaborators on ‘Everyone’s A Star’, alongside Jason Evigan, whose recent chart success came via Benson Boone. They’ve crossed paths with these songwriters and producers before, but it hasn’t felt truly right until now.

“I think it was important for us to feel fresh and to get total new perspectives on everything,” says Michael. “In the past, we probably would have gravitated towards working with people that we’re comfortable with, who we have rapport with. But I think in order to push ourselves on this one, we started working with people who we’ve wanted to work with for a long time. We did one song in the last album with Jason Evigan, called ‘Bad Omens’, which was one of the best songs on the record. And we felt like he could be a great partner to flip what we’ve done in our head. Julian Bunetta and John Ryan, we worked with way back in the day, and it didn’t really make a lot of sense back then. But then, for some reason, going into it on this one, and they just understood it. That was an important part of the process, all of our collaborators feeling like we were finding stuff together, and not necessarily us, just telling them what it is yet.”

“I don’t think a lot of people realise that we’ve been trying to work with those guys for ten years,” adds Ashton. “We wrote some of our first songs with John Ryan and Julian Bunetta in the UK, in like Shepherd’s Bush in 2011, 2012 maybe, and we didn’t get anything. You always come back around to people you like to work with, even if you don’t get any cuts. It’s nice to revisit old relationships when they’re having new success in their lives, and definitely with guys like John and Julian and Jason, etc, it’s to be celebrated, for sure, but we’re lucky to have these really long-term, decade-long songwriting partnerships and friendships with these people.”

“You just have to trust each other,” adds Calum. “We’re never a million miles apart, really, in terms of the vision, but we’re constantly communicating. You still need to be clear about where your head is at. Creating something totally new takes many conversations to find clarity.”

“For a few years there, we were kind of anti-stylist, anti-anything”

The album, frankly, sounds massive. It pulls from a different side of arena rock, aiming for ferocious drums with dance rhythms a la The Prodigy, decapitator-filtered spoken vocals straight out of a Gorillaz record, similarly heavy, funky bass lines. There’s Strokes-y guitars and Oasis melodies in amongst pop-punk delivery and lyrical musings on fame. 

“We realised that our power is in being chameleons,” says Ashton. “Our musical power is in still being us, no matter what we put out and continuing to push what people expect from us. I really like, it makes me super uncomfortable and upset, personally, not speaking on behalf of the band, when people wish we would do something like the past. The past is so boring. It’s already done. It exists. Go listen to that.”

“A lot of these are these tunes that we’re talking about, we were super focused on having the one line that was like, one line to rule them all,” Luke explains. “Like, ‘Make me your number one obsession’. ‘Everyone’s a star’. Having these sorts of lines that you shape a campaign around, and you can put a T-shirt or a billboard or whatever. Because the concepts of these songs are like a conversation, or us using what you call the silly parts of the band, is leaning into the humour and that satire and the irony of our journey in the music industry, whatever odd youth that we had.”

Neon posters that looked like old school rave flyers started springing up, with the slogan “YOUR FAVORITE BOYBAND IS COMING BACK” and a link to yourfavoriteboyband.com, 5SOS weren’t necessarily the obvious answer to who this might be. The URL led to a quiz to find out who your favourite boyband is, with all results showing as 5 Seconds of Summer. Much like the dice at the end of the tour, the posters soon made their way into the rooms of the fans who found them first; those lyrics about fandom and obsession playing out in real time.

Most noticeably, though, this new era has seen 5SOS undergo a drastic image overhaul, as the boys looked back on the clear-cut characters they were in their debut days and reached for those archetypes again. 

“Looking at that first album, we think, wow, those are really striking characters,” says Luke. “It’s almost like when you’ve started video game and you have no XP, they sort of look like the first version. But you could draw us, people would dress as us, and for what little styling we had, it was like everyone had a look. And because this journey that the album is on, we were like, how do we do that again, but exaggerated? What does that look like?”

“I remember wearing a Kiss shirt over to your house, Luke, and you said to me, ‘How the hell do we do that?’,” adds Ashton. “It’s probably not the makeup thing, but we definitely need to work on the image. That’s been really exciting about our awareness of our image. We’ve never really thought about it that much because we’ve been more naturalist in our approach, in terms of what we are, how we look. I remember for a few years there, we were kind of anti-stylist, anti-anything. We’d just show up and we’re all individuals and hope for the best. Whereas on this new record, it’s a little more put together, it’s a little more thought about.”

“We are a boyband, and it’s great to be a boyband. Like, no sarcasm – it’s sick”

‘Everyone’s A Star!’ also sees 5 Seconds of Summer reclaiming the boyband label, something they insist they’d never rejected, but just to avoid any further misunderstandings, they’ve whacked in a song all about it called, well, ‘Boyband’.

“I think our views on it kind of got misconstrued,” says Michael. “People thought that we were fighting against being called a boyband, when the whole time we wanted to own that. We want to be a boy band. We want to be the best boy band that we can be in, in the world. I just think there’s something really powerful about, this far in our career, owning up to it. We are a boyband, and it’s great to be a boyband. Like no sarcasm, it’s sick.”

“All we’re doing is empowering ourselves with perspective and opinions that were used to try and tame us or pigeonhole us,” Calum adds.

Despite all the excess, the new look, the new sound, you get the sense that this is the most ‘them’ 5 Seconds of Summer have ever been. They’re not trying to replicate the past, but rather recognising which bits of it needed re-tapping into to get their spark back. And while it does feel a bit like they’re playing 4D chess when it comes to this ironic, tongue-in-cheek songwriting, 5SOS have been in this game long enough to know exactly how to win. There’s still much to be revealed, but do they think the fans are in on the joke?

“Not yet, but they will be soon,” says Ashton. “You can’t ignore the fact of how much media and social media has changed since we came on the scene nearly 15 years ago. This record is us taking in a lot of the social media narrative and the way people are reactive online, and acknowledging the nature of that beast, which is really something we haven’t done as much before. So whether they’re in or out of the joke, you know, it’s kind of got you questioning, is it a joke to begin with?”

“It’s a lot of effort for us to make an album and make the whole thing, and it’s got to be great,” Luke says. “We’ve got to be excited by it and pushing ourselves. And otherwise, you know, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, for lack of a better saying. This is the most excited I’ve ever been about being in the band, which is crazy because we’ve been doing it for a long time, but I really mean that. The songs are so cool and the visuals are really striking, and it just feels like the most complete package of the band that we’ve had, and potentially ever.”

Taken from the November 2025 issue of Dork. 5 Seconds Of Summer’s album ‘Everyone’s A Star!’ is out 14th November.