In the new issue of the Alternative Press magazine, the editors looked at all the upcoming album releases and names a couple of them the most anticipated records of 2016. And surprise, surprise – Simple Plan’s new album Taking One For The Team is on the list!
Check out the brand new image from the Chapman Baehler photoshoot that accompanies the post about SP and make sure to pick up the new AP issue if you can!
On Monday, December 7th, Télé-Québec aired a very thought-provoking documentary called Crise d’identité in which host Bernard Derome interviewed 14 well-known personalities from Quebec about their thoughts of Quebec and its identity in 2015.
Among the 14 personalities was also Simple Plan’s own Jeff Stinco, who made his mark in Quebec not only by being in Simple Plan, bu recently also by his successful restaurant businesses all over Montreal. Check out a still picture of Jeff from the documentary in the gallery:
One of the topics discussed in the documentary was the fact that via various channels, the French language is slowly being “ghetto-ized” and replaced with English. In the documentary, Jeff defended Simple Plan’s choice of the use of English in their songs. He said that he and his band-mates grew up listening to Green Day, NOFX, The Offspring and Blink-182, so it just came naturally for them to “sing in the language of Cobain.” He also added that he was born in the West Island area, in a French-speaking family, grew up on an English street, juggled two languages and was never seen as a “traitor” for not singing in French.
For all of yesterday and today, the guys from Simple Plan were busy giving a number of interviews to the local Mexican media in Mexico City, where they are to perform today at the Telehit awards. Have a look at some of the pictures from yesterday and today:
In one of the interviews, for the radio Alfa 91.3 FM, the members of the band were even forced to do a little karaoke – which is something Chuck seemed to be dreading, however he obliged anyway and below you can check out a sneak peek at his and Seb’s attempt at coming up with their own song:
Pierre and Sebastien revealed some interesting personal stuff during the round of the game “Never have I ever..” that they played at the Energy Zurich radio station on Friday.
Check out their answers in the video below:
«Hab ich (nicht)» mit Simple Plan
Pierre Bouvier und Sébastien Lefebvre von Simple Plan haben bei uns vorbeigeschaut und sich dem «Hab ich (nicht)» Quiz gestellt. http://goo.gl/C4s0nG
Posted by Energy Zürich on 20. listopad 2015
The members of Simple Plan spent the last couple of days going from an interview to an interview, promoting their upcoming studio album in Europe. From London to Milan, from Milan to Zurich – the guys visited a number of radio stations and even performed acoustically a couple times there. And while most of the interviews are still yet to be posted, I already went through all those that are already online and decided to sum them up for you. These interviews include those for Radio Popolare, Melty.fr or Magazine.it.
There are definitely some topics that can’t be avoided in any interview: all the interviews deal with Simple Plan’s new album with the guys constantly confirming it’s coming out in February 2016. With some of the negative reactions to the fact that some of the released songs were a little too “poppy”, it feels like the guys took it to their hearts to reassure their fans via these interviews that while there will be some experimental tracks on the record, at least half of the album will be consisted of their old-school pop-punk sound with even a couple of the most rock songs they’ve ever written. Not to mention quite a few ballads would be added to the mix.
Regarding the themes in their songs, in the interview for the Serbian Nocturne Magazine, Pierre spoke about about what inspires them to write the songs they write and how it’s not always just their own experience their songs reflect:
“(…) Your music changes along with you. When we started, we were in our late teens or early twenties, and now we are older. Some of us are married and have children. (…) [Our own experience] surely has an impact, but not all our songs are necessarily connected to what’s happening in our lives. Most of them are like that, but sometimes songs come from a completely different perspective. I don’t even know how to explain it. The fact is that we are adults and that some things have changed. The manner in which you live, the way you think and look at it, but not everything is perfect, and we don’t just put out happy songs. Do not forget that on the last album we had a song called “This Song Saved My Life” which can in no way be considered to have happy lyrics. It is a pretty dark song that talks about how music can be important and significant in the life of an individual. Certainly, there will be [both positive and negative songs] on the new album.”
As an addition to that, I’d also like to post a quote from the interview for Corriere Quotidiano, where the band discussed the recent attacks in Paris (as in many other recent interviews) and gave some of their thoughts on the importance of not letting the fear to take over:
“We respond to terrorism with music (…) The most important thing is that the music does not stop – to deal with terrorism, I think we should continue to live, not to be terrified – they aim to frighten us and change our lives and make us do what they want.” – Pierre Bouvier
It was in this interview that the band also stated they want to come back to Paris as soon as they can – “probably in January”. This is the first time Simple Plan ever mentioned a particular month of the start of their tour (interestingly, before the release of their album).
Besides the interviews, Jeff also took the time to answer directly to the Simple Plan fans while he was on his promo trip and last night he once again picked up his phone before he fell asleep and decided for another Q&A session on Twitter. This time around, one of the most important answers he gave to one of the fans was the one in which he expressed his wish to release one more song before the album comes out in February. So we may look forward to some new SP music – hopefully very soon!
And finally, in the gallery you’ll find a number of new pictures from SP’s promo trip to Milan, Italy and also Zurich, Switzerland:
