5 Seconds of Summer are a popular band. They’re really popular in fact. That didn’t stop them from being named the worst band in the world three years in a row though.
NME once gave the Australian favourites the unsavoury award from 2015, 2016 and 2017, which probably didn’t feel good.
Five years on from that humiliation, drummer Ashton Irwin reflected on their emotions at the time in a new interview with the same publication.
“Y’all called us the worst band and that affects a guy,” he said. “That guy at 28 doesn’t give a fuck and I actually think it’s awesome. But when you’re 17 and 18 you go, ‘I’m in the worst band? What?’ and it’s like what do you mean? What does that mean to me? What did I do wrong?”
“But that’s just a relative example of how things can be said about the character of the band, really do affect the stability of the whole thing,” he added.
Not that being crowned the worst band in the world three times did any damage to the band. Their fifth studio album, 5SOS, was a commercial smash earlier this year, topping the charts in Australia and the U.K., while the album also reached number two on the U.S. Billboard 200.
In the same NME interview, frontman Luke Hemmings discussed the making of 5SOS. “In many ways, this album feels like the first one to me,” he said.
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“The debut was recorded when we were living in London and didn’t really know what we were doing – and this time around, we had this freedom and sense of feeling carefree, in a way that we didn’t really have the last time around. I think that really shines through in the lyrics: everything has changed, and nothing has changed for us. It was nice to feel as though we’re able to do all of this on our own.”
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Check out ‘Older’ by 5 Seconds of Summer:
