5 Seconds of Summer has dropped their sixth studio album which features a new sound and also a theme featured throughout the album, something (as far as I’m aware) they haven’t done before. Here’s my ranking and thoughts on the album as a huge 5SOS fan.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of drug abuse and body image issues.
- “Ghost”
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If you see a 5SOS song with the word “ghost” in the title, then you know you’re about the get your heart broken. My interpretation of this one is that the “ghost” is addiction, and that the story is told from the point of view of someone struggling with an addiction and watching their partner struggle with one as well. Luke’s vocals are beautiful and the instrumentals and production combined with the detailed storytelling make it feel truly haunting.
- “I’ll Find You”
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Another song with amazing storytelling. This song is so gorgeous in its simplicity and I adore Calum Hood’s voice so much, so it’s a bonus that he sings the whole thing. This song had me tearing up in a lecture hall when I listened to it for the first time while waiting for class to start. The production also works really well here, portraying the feeling of being connected to just one person within a crowd.
- “Start Over”
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I love a good yearning song and the chorus is super catchy. There’s not really much to say about this one besides that it’s a bit repetitive, but it’s such an earworm that I don’t really mind. It also kind of sounds like it would be a David Guetta song.
- “I’m Scared I’ll Never Sleep Again”
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This is already a fan-favorite. Also, as many fans pointed out, the opening sounds very similar to songs by The 1975. The chorus and pre-chorus are so good, I just wish that there was a little less talk-singing and that the piano towards the end was more audible. Fun fact: Sierra Deaton of Alex & Sierra, who is now Luke’s wife, has three writing credits (“Everyone’s A Star!,” “Ghost,” and “Jawbreaker”) on this album and also sings backup vocals on this track.
- “NOT OK”
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This song took a long time to grow on me, but it’s now become my favorite of the singles for this album. I think I was thrown off because it sounds so different from their other music, especially their fifth album, 5SOS5, which I love so much. If there’s one thing about 5SOS, it’s that they know how do an awesome instrumental break. The one for this song happens after the bridge and the guitar just hits so hard, which works well with the fact that Michael Clifford, the band’s guitarist, sings the following chorus. This song also features lyrics like “I feel invincible” and “when my heart slows down, will you pick me up?” which allude to a theme of drug and alcohol abuse that appears throughout the album and ties into the larger theme of fame. This song fits Michael’s voice so well and I wish there was more of him here and on the album as a whole. I wouldn’t have noticed the lack of his vocals if my best friend hadn’t pointed it out to me, so thanks girl.
- “Telephone Busy”
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This was originally my favorite of the singles. The talk-singing worked well for “NOT OK” but less so for “Telephone Busy.” The chorus, however, is so cool and bendy and catchy as hell. It’s super groovy and easy to listen to but you can also dance to it. It’s overall just a really fun song. My only complaint is that the bridge is really boring. I feel like they could have done more with it than just repeating the same thing over and over with drums in the back.
- “Boyband”
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This song is the most direct in its commentary on the effects of fame. If you’re a 5SOS fan, then you probably know that the band has adamantly denied being a boy band for years. So, when I first saw the title of this song, I thought it was humorous and that they were going to poke fun at this. Then I saw that in an interview with Triple J, they claim that the label has been used against them and that they are now reclaiming it. This makes sense considering boy bands often aren’t taken seriously because of their predominantly teenage girl audiences. By reclaiming the label, 5SOS is also shaking off the implicit misogyny of seeing the idea of being a boy band as a bad thing. The song does a good job at commentating on their experience as a “boy band” under a comedic guise. For example, the lyrics “make that monkey dance” and “make me the flavor of the week now” relate to having to present a certain image/feeling like puppets of the industry and the fight to stay relevant. It’s interesting to hear this song and think about all the things these guys had to go through when they were just teenagers.
- “istillfeelthesame”
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Another yearning banger. It’s not very memorable in the context of the album as a whole, but I think that the production is super cool, especially in the sparkly outro that starts after the sound of a tape being inserted into a cassette player which is such a cool touch. It’s hard to pick up on the lyrics, but they are really detailed and paint a clear picture. I’m also very glad for the Michael vocals which have been sorely missed.
- “Everyone’s A Star!”
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This one is another commentary on fame. In my interpretation, it’s telling the fans that everyone in the industry is “a star,” but they’re “something superior.” It also explores darker parts of fame such as the pressure to maintain a certain physique. The lyric “eating gum for dinner” ties in with the lyric “love me when I’m skinny” from “Boyband,” as well as drummer Ashton Irwin’s solo song “Skinny Skinny“, which is about his struggles with his body image. This title tract also includes lyrics like “someone call the dealer, feeling like a god” which is yet another allusion to drug use and the second part could be speaking about the parasocial aspect of fandoms. In this case, the drug use is implied to be used as a coping mechanism for the intensity of fame.
- “Jawbreaker”
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I’ve noticed that this album has a bit of a problem with over-production and it’s especially evident in this song. The lyrics are incredible and work really well with the simple melody. The production elements, however, are very distracting and take away from the song. I don’t like the drums and the hollow noise in the first verse. The drums should’ve come in at the chorus and that hollow noise thing should just not be there because it’s distracting, doesn’t add anything, takes away from the vibe of the song, and is honestly kind of annoying. The song could have worked beautifully as an acoustic track or at least one with light production and instrumentals because, again, those lyrics are so good but they’re being overpowered. It’s also very short, only two minutes, which could have remedied if it was made into a slower, simpler track.
- “Evolve”
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I have very mixed feelings about this song. On my first listen, I was in love… until I got to the bridge. The bridge is a recording of someone saying that girls mature earlier than boys because of earlier myelination (the process of neurons being insulated by myelin so that they can transmit electric impulses more efficiently). I’m not going to be an annoying psych major and talk about why I doubt the validity of this claim, but just know that is part of why the bridge irks me. The other part is that I just don’t think it matches with the rest of the song. This led me to pay attention to the rest of the lyrics on this track. It’s about having to “evolve” to be good enough for your partner. According to Calum in an article from Official Charts, the song is meant to be empowering to the band’s mainly female audience by talking about how men are dumb and immature. I can see the good intentions behind this, but instead of empowering, the song puts the responsibility of men “evolving” onto the woman. This is seen in the lyric “I know you can make me a man from a monkey,” which is a reference to “Boyband” and possibly Beauty and the Beast. It plays into the “I can fix him” trope where a woman does the work of redeeming a man for him instead of the man taking responsibility for himself. Although everything else about the song slaps, the lyrics and the bridge taint it for me.
- “Wishful Dreaming”
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There’s just something about this song that sounds like it would be an unreleased track from Youngblood or CALM. I enjoy this song a lot, but I can’t say it’s one of the better ones because it isn’t the most cohesive. While I was happy to hear some acoustic guitar, it feels a bit choppy going between the production in the verse to acoustic guitar in the chorus to production again. It almost seems like the chorus and verses are from two different songs. Although, I do think that that the fallout of the production on the bridge works well, and that this should have been the only time that this happens in the song. And, of course, 5SOS delivers on yet another amazing instrumental break.
- “The Rocks”
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This song sounds simultaneously very early 5SOS and very Paramore. Tell me you can’t hear Hayley Williams singing this. I like this song, but it’s not the strongest nor most remarkable one on the album. The bridge is cool and I like the concept, but the lyrics don’t really match the vibes of the song. I would love to see an acoustic version of this one.
- “Chest”
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I love how this song sounds, but the lyrics are just so boring that they ruin it for me. I especially like the flow of the second verse. Also, in the last minute, the production elements become so random and do not match the rest of the song. With better lyrics and without the weird production at the end, this could have been a really fun song that leaned into 5SOS’s rock influences.
- “No.1 Obsession”
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Whenever I listen to this song, in the beginning I’m like, “yeah, I don’t like this one” but by the end I’m like, “it’s actually not bad.” I really don’t like the first verse, both with the lyrics and how it sounds, especially the repeating part. Also, I hate to say it, but the beginning of the chorus is kind of giving “moonbeam ice cream.” It just doesn’t really blend with the rest of the song. The second half of the chorus is cool, though, and has a much darker tone that the first half. This tone shift may have been intentionally, but I don’t think it works well sonically. Another bright point of the song is the spacey bridge, which is a tone shift that does work. I would enjoy this song a lot more if the first half of the chorus didn’t throw me off so much. That being said, I can see this song growing on me in the same way that “NOT OK” did.
- “Sick of Myself”
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This song is just so unbelievably boring. It sounds similar to other stuff they’ve done but far less interesting. The lyrics are also pretty unoriginal and follow a similar concept to their song, “Me Myself & I” but less complex and introspective. It’s also very repetitive and offers little variety in its instrumentals and melody to make up for it. The bridge is just the word “yeah” over and over and the outro is like this too, repeating “please stay.” Not to mention that the lyric “I’m so sick of myself, wish I was somebody else” is nearly identical to Olivia Rodrigo’s “jealousy, jealousy.” I doubt that this was on purpose, but it just further proves the lack of effort to differentiate this song from others with a similar concept. I’m pretty disappointed because I know that 5SOS is more creative than this.
Unrelated, but this song includes the lyric “‘till there was you” which is possibly one of two The Music Man references on this album, the first one being in “Boyband” with the lyric “King of the River City,” where the musical takes place.
Concluding Thoughts:
I noticed that overall, the production elements on the album could be a bit overwhelming. Sometimes they took away from the song, and sometimes it seemed like the song relied too heavily on them. I can’t help but feel that these issues might not have happened if Micheal produced this album like he did for most of the songs on 5SOS5 because he did such a good job. I also noticed that a lot of the bridges consisted of slowed down lyrics that had already been in the song or just repeatedly saying “yeah” or something similar. Bridges are my favorite parts of songs and I feel like not much love was put into them on this album, at least lyrically.
I know that I had a lot of criticism for this project, but I actually do really like it. I love that this album had so much to say about how fame can affect a person, especially from a young age. I appreciate that the band constantly experiments with their sound and tries new things. The promo for this album was also so much better than for the last one which had hardly any promo, at least that I was aware of at the time. I won’t be able to go to the upcoming Everyone’s A Star World Tour (which they announced hilariously via fake music video), so if you’re going, make sure to take videos and post them online please and thank you.