When Rolling Stone profiled 5 Seconds of Summer in 2015, the band were desperate to shake off the “boyband” tag. They leaned into chaos, rebellion, and carefully staged edginess – anything to prove that they were not just a group built on teenage girls’ affection. The article painted them as reckless, defensive, and implicitly framed their fans as the problem: too many, too loud, too female.
That reaction was never really about music. It was about credibility, and who is allowed to confer it. Fangirl, a word that should mean nothing more than someone who cares deeply about something, has become an insult: shorthand for being hysterical, obsessive, or unserious. It is a cultural penalty for enthusiasm, specifically when that enthusiasm comes from women.
We mock “fangirls” for crying at concerts, queueing for merch, chanting lyrics – but call the same behaviour “passion” when it occurs in male-dominated spaces. Football fans flood stadiums, chant themselves hoarse, and occasionally riot (alcohol is banned in football stands for a reason) yet their devotion is framed as tradition, loyalty, even identity. When women scream, it is embarassing. When men do it, it is culture.
This double standard has long shadowed the music industry, where female fandom is simultaneously the foundation of success, and the reason artists struggle for credibility. Few bands have wrestled with that contradiction more openly than 5 Seconds of Summer – their story sits squarely in the middle of it. Rocketing to success with their ties to boyband One Direction, their fanbase – overwhelmingly young and feamle – was treated as proof the band were not “real musicians” – their success was evidence of hysteria, not artistry. It is a familiar story: we like women’s consumption when it is profitable, not when it is loud. Online this bias plays out daily: Formula One fans complaing about “Lando fangirls” making their sport “cringe”; music fans deride strangers online for their top five songs; Star Wars buffs ask if you really liked that movie, or was it just the actor?
Part of this phenomenon comes from a fear of losing control. For some men, perhaps there is comfort in having cultural spaces that feel exclusively theirs, places where they can be the experts, the ones who know more. When women enter those spaces, their presence is treated like contamination, as if femininity automatically trivialises something once “serious”. Suddenly a sport, a video game, a music genre, becomes woke, ruined, not what it used to be. This same anxiety haunted 5SOS’s early years: a band caught between mainstream pop and punk, mocked for being too clean-cut for one and too chaotic for the other.
You only need to look at the reaction to Ghost of Yotei, the highly anticipated sequel to the game Ghost of Tsushima (the first game I ever platinumed, and thus, holds a very special place in my heart) to see this logic in action. The mere announcement of a female protagonist led to social-media meltdowns: complaints that the game was “woke”, fan edits inflating her body, giving her makeup, redesigning her to fit the male gaze – if they want to be woke, they could at least make the girl attractive – it is a perfect illustration of the rule. Women can exist in these worlds, but only as men want to see them.
For women, you can never win. Show only passing interest, and you are faking it – know too much, and you are threatening their space. You are asked where you learned it, what ex taught you, why you care – as if a woman’s knowledge must always be second hand. There is a persistent belief that women cannot genuinely love something without doing it for male attention. It is as if so many are still baffled by the radical idea that women have interests of their own. 5SOS’ early fanbase faced the same suspicion: accused of being delusional, hormonal, naïve – never simply devoted.
Even in female-dominated fandoms, you cannot win. It is embarassing to like something mainly girls like: how could they ever have good taste? It cannot be that good if not that many men like it. Yet, if you enjoy it quietly, you are cliché. Either way, the message is always the same: your enthusiasm is always the problem. That is what makes the “fangirl” stereotype so exhausting. It is not about who is a fan, but who is allowed to be valid and visible when they are one.
Within the music industry, few bands have felt that tension more acutely than 5 Seconds of summer. Their initial insecurity feels almost inevitable. They were teenagers, plucked from Australia, launched into global fame, and told they would always be an unserious “boyband” – simply because their fans were girls – even when they outsell and get direct praise from their pop-punk idols. In a culture where femininity automatically discredits seriousness, how could that not sink in? Rejecting their “boy band” image – and consequently their fangirls – became a shortcut to legitimacy: a way to prove they belonged in the same sentence as the bands they idolised
Yet, even then, guitarist Michael Clifford pushed back against the framing. After the Rolling Stone article dropped, he tweeted “I hate when people include everything in an article except the reason we’re a band – the fans”. That honesty cut through the posturing. It was a reminder that behind the noise, they did understand the fans that sustained them.
Ten years later, that tension is gone. 5SOS are entering a new chapter with Everyone’s a Star, releasing November 14 with Republic Records, their first major label deal since departing from Interscope Records in 2021. The album’s promotional singles and aesthetic is covered in a glossy, confident, Y2K pop sheen. As the band told Rolling Stone this year, the look and tone came “naturally”, not as some contrived marketing ploy.
The shift feels less like a reinvention and more like reconciliation, an acceptance of who they have always been, and who has always been listening. The same boys who once bristled at the “boy band” label are now wearing it on their own terms. It is not pandering: it is maturity. They no longer treat femininity as a threat to authenticity, but as a part of their creative DNA. Maybe that is what makes this transformation so compelling.
Back in 2015, 5SOS and their fans were engaged in the same performance, both trying to prove legitimacy to a culture that refuses to take young women’s passion seriously. The band wanted to be seen as “real musicians”. Their fans wanted to be seen as “real fans” of real music. Both were fighting the same battle: the assumption that femininity and seriousness cannot coexist.
Now, the defensiveness is gone. Following on from their image and sound reset with 2018’s Youngblood, 5SOS sound like a band comfortable in their own mythology, one that recognises that devotion – even when it comes wrapped in spiked hairstyles, eyeliner, and screaming crowds – has always been the truest marker of success. This evolution stems from genuine growth, and shows that the industry’s old reflex – to sneer at the girls who made it profitable – is being questioned by the very artists it benefited.
In the end, this shift is about more than 5SOS. It is about who we still think is allowed to feel things loudly. The fact that “fangirl” still works as both insult and infrastructure says everything about how gender shapes what we consider “serious”. Maybe Everyone’s a Star is not just an album title. Maybe it is a quiet nod to the fangirls who screamed first – because fangirls were never the punchline, they were always the proof.