Music / 5 Seconds of Summer

L-R: Michael Clifford, Luke Hemmings, Calum Hood and Ashton Irwin

Influenced by:

• All Time Low, The Beatles, blink-182, Boys Like Girls, Busted, A Day to Remember, Depeche Mode, Disclosure, Good Charlotte, Gorillaz, Green Day, HEALTH, INXS, Mayday Parade, Mc Fly, My Chemical Romance, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Queen, St. Vincent, Tears for Fears, The Used, Yellowcard

5 Seconds of Summer (commonly abbreviated as 5SOS) are a pop rock/Pop Punk band from Australia, formed in 2011.

The band was formed by lead vocalist Luke Hemmings, lead guitarist Michael Clifford, and bassist Calum Hood, who all attended the same high school. The three began posting covers on Luke's YouTube channel, and shortly after invited drummer Ashton Irwin to join, completing the four-man lineup.

Despite having no promotion apart from social media, the band caught the attention of major labels (signing a publishing deal with Sony/ATV Music Publishing) and charted impressively with their independent debut releases. As the band grew in fame, the members' commitment also grew, leading to all of them eventually leaving school.

5SOS really started to take off when they were discovered online by Louis Tomlinson and offered a gig as the opening act for One Direction's 2013 Take Me Home Tour. The next year proved to be a huge breakout for them, as they nailed a #1 album in dozens of countries and began to explode in popularity. They re-teamed with 1D for their 2014 Where We Are Tour, and went on their on their first headlining tour, Rock Out With Your Socks Out, in 2015.

In 2018, 5SOS largely bucked their pop punk style for a blend of moody electronic Synth-Pop and rock on 2018's Youngblood. This Genre Shift carried onto their following albums, C A L M and 5SOS5.

Members of 5 Seconds of Summer:

• Luke Robert Hemmings - lead and backing vocals, rhythm and lead guitar, keyboards
• Michael Gordon Clifford - lead and rhythm guitar, keyboards, lead and backing vocals
• Calum Thomas Hood - bass guitar, keyboards, lead and backing vocals
• Ashton Fletcher Irwin - drums, percussion, keyboards, lead and backing vocals

Discography:

• Unplugged (2012, EP)^note Independent release
• Somewhere New (2012, EP)^note Independent release
• She Looks So Perfect (2014, EP)
• Don't Stop (2014, EP)
• Amnesia (2014, EP)
• Good Girls (2014, EP)
• 5 Seconds of Summer (2014)
• LiveSOS (2014)
• Sounds Good Feels Good (2015)
• Youngblood (2018)
• Meet You There Tour Live (2018)
• C A L M (2020)
• 5SOS5 (2022)

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I'm just a dead man troping tonight:

• Better Partner Assertion: Their song "Just Saying" is about the lead singer telling a girl that he would be a better boyfriend than her current one for reasons such as: her friends like him more, he wouldn't make her pay for dates, her boyfriend still lives with his mom, and her boyfriend is cheating on her.
  'Cause I'm better than him
  Just saying.
• Boy Band: Although they don't like being called this label, given that they were not manufactured, play their own instruments, and write their own music, the media often labels them one due to being in roughly the same age range, their affiliation to 1D, and targeting the same teenage girl demographic that 1D is marketed at. (Then again, most successful pop-punk acts also target the same teenage girl demographic.) All four band members sing on their albums and the marketing doesn't single out one member as the frontman. When the media does single one of them out, it's usually Luke.
• But Not Too Foreign: Ashton Irwin's father is American, making him a dual citizen of that country and Australia.
• Concept Album: Youngblood is a concept album about the breakdown of a relationship.
• Cover Version:
  • LiveSOS features "What I Like About You", "Teenage Dream" and "American Idiot".
  • The band released a cover of Queen's Killer Queen to tie in with the release of Bohemian Rhapsody with a portion of the profits going to the Mercury Phoenix Trust.
• Death's Hourglass: The music video for "Youngblood" features an elderly Japanese couple taking a pill that restores them to their youth for 24 hours. The flashing imagery, the skeletal x-rays, and the man of the couple constantly checking his watch heavily imply that he and his beau will both die at the end of this time (as does the nurse bringing them their de-aging pill), and at the end of the music video both lay slumped over each other in an alleyway.
• Good Bad Girl: A line from "Good Girls" provides one of the quotes given on its quote page.
  She said to me,
  "Forget what you thought
  'Cause good girls are bad girls that haven't been caught."
• I Can't Believe a Guy Like You Would Notice Me: The protagonist of "End Up Here" shares his friends' surprise when a beautiful girl seeks him out at a party. In fact, the entire song consists of him wondering why.
  Call me lucky 'cause in the end
  I'm a six and she's a ten
  She's so fit, I'm insecure
  But she keeps coming back for more
  How did we end up talking in the first place?
• Genre Throwback: 90s-2000s pop punk for their first two releases, 80s pop rock and new wave with hints of industrial for Youngblood and C A L M.
• Initialism Title: C A L M, named after the first letters of each member's name (Calum, Ashton, Luke, Michael)
• Lead Bassist: Subverted. Calum and Ashton do not overshadow Luke. However, since every member of the band sings and each member is given equal consideration in promotion (like a boy band!), they are in the spotlight much more than a pop-punk band's bassist and drummer would normally be.
• Mr. Fanservice: All to an extent but Luke seems to get it the most. Especially in the video for "Easier".
• Pop Punk: Completely bucking the sound of late 2000s-early 2010s pop-punk bands like Man Overboard, Neck Deep, The Wonder Years, and The Story So Far in favor of a lighthearted throwback 1990s to early 2000s pop-punk acts like All Time Low, Blink182, Good Charlotte, Green Day, Jimmy Eat World, and Fall Out Boy. This difference in sound is part of the reason why you'll either see them heralded as the second coming of pop-punk to the mainstream in the mid-2010s or the worst things to ever happen to the genre.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • In the band's Single "She's Kinda Hot", fans were shocked when they heard Luke curse.
    My girlfriend's bitching 'cause I always sleep in
  • In "Want You Back", fans were similarly surprised to hear Luke say the word "fucking".
    Is it tears or just the fucking rain?
• Sexiness Score: The protagonist of "End Up Here" is shocked when a Head-Turning Beauty seeks him out at a party and points out the difference between them in lyrics by claiming she's a "ten" while he's a "six".
• Was It All a Lie?: Amnesia is a type 2. The narrator was in a genuine relationship that ended badly; he wonders if his ex's easy recovery from it means she never really loved him at all.
  Sometimes I start to wonder, was it just a lie?
  If what we had was real, how could you be fine?

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