Everyones A Star!

5SOSが帰ってきた!
2014年のデビュー以来世界中のファンの心を掴み、数々の記録を打ち立ててきた5SOS。グローバルでの累計ストリーミング数は170億回を超え、US Billboard 200でオーストラリア出身アーティストとして史上最多となる3作のアルバムが1位を獲得。「She Looks So Perfect」「Youngblood」「Amnesia」といったアンセムは世代を超えて愛される楽曲となり世界中のファンに響き続けている彼らが、待望の6枚目となるスタジオアルバム『Everyone's A Star』をリリース。全12曲を収録し、最新シングル「NOT OK」収録!

Australias 5 Seconds of Summer deliver a bombastically fun, knowingly self-aware cybercore dance album with 2025s EVERYONES A STAR!. Arriving three years after the eponymously titled 5SOS, the bands sixth album also comes on the heels of singer Luke Hemmings, guitarist Michael Clifford, bassist Calum Hood, and drummer Ashton Irwin each having released their own solo projects. Consequently, theres a sense that with everybody having had the chance to do their own serious thing, they were able to reunite in the spirit of brotherly collaboration. EVERYONES A STAR! has a fresh, experimental quality as if the band had a giddy time exploring the blend of 90s electronic and 2000s club sounds that make up much of the album. Helping them achieve their hyper-fluorescent Y2K vibe were producers Jason Evigan, Julian Bunetta, and John Ryan, who teamed with the band in Nashville for the sessions. Here, the band frame their vocals in sky blue synths, wiry industrial guitars, and whip-cracking trance beats. Cuts like the opening title track and "NOT OK" have a frenetic, 90s big beat quality, like a heretofore unimagined FIFA World Cup anthem collaboration between the Chemical Brothers and Boyzone. Yet more evocative moments pop up throughout, including the 2000s, Exciter-era Depeche Mode stylism of "No. 1 Obsession," the 80s post-punk romance of "I Feel the Same," and the saucy, falsetto-tinged synth-funk dynamism of "Evolve." As exuberantly hooky as those tracks are, the album truly coalesces around "Boyband," a grinding dance number in which Hemmings and his bandmates manage to both eviscerate and celebrate their teen idol past with a wry, cutting humor, singing "Raised on pop punk and bubblegum/Stay young, love me til I get it wrong/Make me the flavour of the week/Now I only feel alive when youre looking at me." That the song ends with an outro where you hear the band laughing and saying, "I had to admit, it was really f&*king awesome!," speaks to the wry sense of playfulness they achieve throughout EVERYONES A STAR!. While that self-aware sense of irony underpins much of the album, theres a heartfelt emotion coming through the pulsing grooves, as on the yearning "Ill Never Sleep Again" and the buoyantly romantic album-closing love letter "Jawbreaker." Whats particularly compelling is just how confidently 5 Seconds of Summer incorporate these vintage-inspired aesthetics into their own sound. Part of this is that they long succeeded in maturing beyond their punky teen pop years several albums ago, embracing a diverse array of sounds. With EVERYONES A STAR!, they look back at their early years with an artful honesty, crafting a post-modern boy band album thats as sonically and thematically ambitious as it is fun. ~ Matt Collar