What happened to 5SOS when the world stopped
Australian band 5 Seconds Of Summer reveal the challenge of releasing an album in lockdown, growing up with their fans, and how their Fire Fight Australia performance was the most talked-about set of the night.
Stellar
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Last week, a 10-storey billboard promoting 5 Seconds Of Summer’s new album CALM dominated Times Square in New York.
With foot traffic of more than 330,000 people per day, the so-called “crossroads of the world” is highly sought-after real estate for any artist who wants to advertise a project they’ve just released.
Unfortunately for the four-piece Australian band, next to nobody saw it – and that includes themselves.
Up until mid-March, they were set to embark on a global promotional trip to play live shows, visit radio stations for on-air appearances and make the rounds of morning and late-night TV programs.
Now? Not so much. Each member of the group – Luke Hemmings, Ashton Irwin, Calum Hood and Michael Clifford – are self-isolating in their individual Los Angeles homes. Not that they’re feeling sorry for themselves.
Lead singer Hemmings, 23, tells Stellar, “It’s not the ideal time to release our fourth record, but I still feel blessed that we are releasing an album. It’s odd not being able to go outside. But we’re lucky we can stay home; a lot of people don’t have that luxury and are struggling at the moment.”
Irwin, the band’s drummer, agrees: “We’re enjoying it regardless. We’ve never been ones to complain about the situation. The band has remained versatile and enthusiastic. In spite of the circumstances, it’s been a great release so far.”
With planned media opportunities off the table for now, 5SOS – as they are commonly called – have had to find creative ways to move albums and secure a spot high on the charts.
They took a divide-and-conquer approach for their interviews; since Los Angeles and New York were both affected by lockdown laws, a performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon was scaled down to Hemmings performing a solo acoustic rendition of their current hit single ‘Old Me’ via satellite from his living room.
They also cleverly harnessed the help of their tech-savvy, culturally plugged-in army of 20-million-plus fans to spread the word across social media and host virtual streaming parties.
Lead guitarist Clifford, 24, explains, “It’s weird, a lot of people have been asking us if we ever considered changing our launch date, but it never even crossed our minds.
“We had to be OK with letting go of the reins. It would usually be easier because we could be meeting people across the globe right now, but all we have is our phone screen to communicate. We’re doing our best. I’ll leave it at that.”
Irwin, 25, agrees and lets out a laugh when he tells Stellar, “We’ve certainly spent more time on our social media platforms, which is good because we’re talking to the people who actually like us.”
Despite their youthful fan base and common misconceptions that they’re just another boy band – more on that in a moment – 5 Seconds Of Summer is coming up for its 10th anniversary. The group was established in 2011, when teenaged school friends Hemmings, Clifford and Hood, who hail from Sydney’s western suburbs, started posting their covers of popular songs on YouTube. Irwin, who was 16 at the time, joined at the end of that year.
They became known overseas thanks to their opening-act run on British pop group One Direction’s 2013 world tour, which took them from crowds of a couple thousand in Australia’s capital cities to fully packed arenas across the US and the UK.
And putting aside their considerably more rock’n’roll edge, the comparisons to their touring co-act – and those “boy band” labels – came to dominate their story and often the entertainment news.
Several years, a few albums and One Direction’s disbandment later, 5SOS have emerged as a headline act all of their own. Hood, 24, displayed their good sense of humour about the association when a recent live stream was lagging and he joked, “Bring up 1D [One Direction], it’ll revive the stream.”
Admittedly, they have struggled to draw in a more mature crowd with those outside of their Gen Z fanbase still seeing them as a teen group, even though they (and their fans) have aged in the past nine years.
The Fire Fight Australia bushfire benefit concert in February offered the band an opportunity to prove to more than one million viewers they have grown up – and that their music has matured, too.
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Says Hemmings, “Fire Fight was amazing. Obviously, it was under terrible circumstances, but seeing all those people come together from all genres and ages was a beautiful thing to be a part of, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. There were people there who maybe hadn’t heard of us, and there were people who maybe didn’t like us before, but then saw us live or on TV and really enjoyed it, which was cool to hear and see.”
The guys shared the stage with some local and international legends, including Queen, Olivia Newton-John, Alice Cooper and John Farnham, but it was Irwin’s impassioned shirtless performance on drums during their set that had everyone talking.
When Stellar asks Irwin if he read some of the reactions that lit up social media, he confirms he has.
“Yeah, I did,” he laughs. “It was my moment to shine!” More seriously he notes, “We were also able to introduce the way we are as a live band to Australia. People have started to understand who we are, and what the band actually is.”
Until they are able to get back on the road to perform for fans – old and new – the boys remain hunkered down over in the US, particularly awaiting a return to Sydney in December to play two nights at the Opera House forecourt.
As Hemmings tells Stellar, “Playing any stage at this point in time would be incredible, but we’re looking forward to capturing that one; it feels iconic. It’s going to be the most visually stunning gig we’ve ever played.”
CALM is out now. 5 Seconds Of Summer is scheduled to tour Australia from November; visit livenation.com.au for ticketing information.