In the gallery you can now find plenty of new photographs from the red carpet and also from the backstage of the NRJ Music Awards 2012, that took place in Cannes, France, and where Simple Plan (represented by Pierre and David), along with Marie-Mai won their first NRJ award ever – for the Frankophone duet of the year:

At tonight’s annual NRJ Awards in Cannes, France, Simple Plan and Marie-Mai won in the category “Francophone duo/band of the year” for their collaboration on the French version of the song Jet Lag that is featured on Simple Plan’s latest album “Get Your Heart On!”! On behalf of the whole band, Pierre, David and Marie-Mai accepted the award. Immediately after the win, Pierre tweeted: “We won!!!! SP fans you’re the best. Love you so much!” Below you can check out the first pictures of Pierre and David posing alongside Marie-Mai with their brand new NRJ Music Award:

It is important to add that Simple Plan have only been nominated to an NRJ Music Award once before – in 2007 – but only the 2012′s award is their first official win.

Below you can check out Simple Plan’s acceptance speech (in French):

While Jeff, Sebastien and Chuck have already safely landed in Canada, Pierre and David (as I reported earlier) have arrived to Cannes, France yesterday. And despite the long travel all the way from Japan, the two of them were able to get to a scheduled interview with the NRJ radio station (thanks Sab for letting me know), from which you can already check out the first pictures in the gallery. As of right now, the boys are currently attending the NRJ Music Awards in Cannes, France and you can already view the first pictures (supplied by Pierre) from this event:

Despite the previous expectations that tomorrow, January 28th, on their way from Japan, the whole band Simple Plan will stop by Cannes, France to appear on the NRJ Music Awards (where they were also set to perform alongside artists like Britney Spears or Justin Bieber), according to Chuck, only Pierre and David will be present at the award show.

Simple Plan are nominated in the category: “Frankophone duo/group of the year” – because of their musical collaboraion on their single Jet Lag with Marie-Mai. Marie-Mai should also be present at NRJ Music Awards and in case SP and her win, should accept the award with Pierre and David.

The rest of the band is currently flying back home to Canada, where a they will be getting ready for the Canadian tour, that starts only in a few weeks. The band will be touring with All Time Low, These Kids Wear Crowns and Marianas Trench.

From past experience I can honestly say that no other weekend has been this crazy for the SP fans, as this one – and I dare say most importantly because of this Saturday, January 14th 2012, it will go down in Simple Plan’s history. This time though not because of some great thing the guys have achieved or some kick-ass show they just played. No, this time it was all in the hands of the fans themselves. Simple Plan fans managed something they have never before: to completely take over Twitter and its Trending Topics.

If you’re a social network newbie, or just try to stay away from Twitter as much as possible, here’s the deal: Trending Topics is sort of a system that Twitter uses to find out (and show to its users) the 10 topics, that people talk about the most in real time on this network – that means it shows the most popular topics on Twitter. And due to the fact that these 10 Trending Topics are shown to all the Twitter users, it is a very neat and interesting way of promotion.

And what exactly did the fans manage to “trend”? For some unknown reason, without any massive call to arms, “Pierre Bouvier”, started trending. And that started it all. When the fans managed to get the name “Chuck Comeau” up on the TT list as well, they were certain they must put the rest of the band up as well. So, shortly after that, you could spot “Seb Lefebvre”, then “David Desrosiers” and “Jeff Stinco” among the worldwide Trending Topics. But the fans were far from the end of this take-over. Even though he is not with SP as much as he used to, most fans still consider him to be the “6th member of Simple Plan” – and that’s why “Patrick Langlois” was the next thing to trend. The fans wrapped up this Saturday craziness with “Astronauts Love Simple Plan” and “Brazil Miss Simple Plan”, to show the whole world, who’s fans were on fire that day.

And how did the band react to these news? Because this was the first time ever (if we’re not counting some birthday hashtags from a year ago) that the members’ names got to be on the TT list, they were absolutely mind-blowned. This is how Pierre reacted (after being told by Chuck): “I’m a trending topic!! How awesome! Our fans rule!! Pierre Bouvier is the coolest!!! This might be one of the highlights of my life… HAHAH!”.

According to Chuck’s reaction when he appeared on TT, he was pretty surprised too: “You’re joking! Now i’m trending worldwide!! Wow! 1st time ever! SP fans are INSANE today! Thank you so much! You guys rock!”, soon adding: “I’m sitting in my hotel room in KL and I can’t believe how powerful the SP Family and the SP Astronauts can be. I’m blown away! Thank you! Must a LOT of people looking at the trending topics and asking themselves: who the hell is Chuck Comeau? LOL. Love it! Thank you, SPfamily”, and finally: “Well SP fans…you made Chuck Comeau very happy tonight. I love you guys!”

Sebastien expressed his ecstasy with a tweet saying: “Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo YEAH!!!!!!” and then of course when Jeff found out, he sent this beautiful message to his fans: “Wow! I just saw that I’m trending worldwide….you guys are the most crazy, sick, amazing, incredible, wonderful, brilliant fans in the world! I don’t even know what to write you guys, I’m so touched. Everything I think of sounds showoff-y or plain stupid so i’ll stick to: thank you! I’m an Astronaut too. Let’s say it how it really is: Simple Plan just has the best fans in the world. You guys are the reason why we’ve been at it for so long.”

And we can’t forget about Patrick’s reaction, who definitely didn’t expect a thing: “Just woke up from a nap and I see that I was trending worldwide! That’s crazy!! I guess I should nap more often!”

I still have no idea what exactly happened yesterday and what caused all this awesomeness, but the fans have definitely proved how strong they can be, when they join their forces. They proved it today also, when “Simple Plan Saved My Life” has topped the worldwide Trending Topics for hours. And what will trend next? Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook and it case something goes on, you’ll be the first to know.

Ever since the release of Still Not Getting Any, one of Simple Plan’s main causes that they are involved in, is the fight against drunk driving. It started with the release of the single Untitled, and most importantly by the accompanying music video, which depicts what impacts can a DUI-related car accident have on not only the victims of the accident, but also on their families and friends. The song was inspired by a personal story of the guys’ high school friend, who (by driving drunk) caused a car accident that killed his best friend.

With this song, Simple Plan started a massive campaign against drunk-driving, and the music video for Untitled has been used countless times by programs like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), RADD (Recording Artists Actors & Athletes Against Drink Driving) and also the state of Virginia uses the music video to scare off the upcoming holders of driver’s licences.

The previously mentioned program called RADD, particularly its Australian part, has recently released a series of short audio files, all including messages from well-known personalities, asking the listeners not to drink and drive. And because of the recent visit of Simple Plan in Australia, we can now find our own David Desrosiers on one of the files, spreading this important message… and using the word “gig” quite a lot (thanks CSP for the file):