Time flies so fast – it feels like yesterday when we were welcoming Simple Plan’s latest album on its release day, February 19th 2016 – but today ‘Taking One For The Team’ already celebrates its second anniversary!
This album came out after months of writing, recording and post-production – and even second recording sessions, which many fans recall as the “pop-punk sessions”, when Simple Plan went back to studio in November 2015 to add a bit more rock and pop-punk to the already finished record. That is where tracks like ‘Farewell’, ‘Opinion Overload’ or ‘Nostalgic’ were created.
Similarly to their fourth album, Simple Plan once again featured various interesting vocalists on this record, who were supposed to give the record a little bit of a different feel. Rapper Nelly laid some guest vocals on the song ‘I Don’t Wanna Go To Bed’, musical duo Rock City then appeared on ‘Singing In The Rain’, while the voice of Jordan Pundik from New Found Glory can be heard on ‘Farewell’ and the only female artist – Juliet Simms – sang beautifully on the final track – ‘I Dream About You’.
As far as singles are concerned, Simple Plan chose to go with some of their more poppier tracks on the album. At first, they went with ‘I Don’t Wanna Go To Bed’ (feat. Nelly) as their first single from TOFTT, which was later followed by ‘Singing In The Rain’ and ‘Perfectly Perfect’. Besides these tracks, the song ‘Opinion Overload’ also got its own accompanying video despite the fact that it has not been named a single and therefore wasn’t put on radio play.
Looking back, how do you feel about Simple Plan’s last studio effort? Which songs are your favorite? And would you like for the band to head a similar direction with their next record?
