Stating which album is the best one is undoubtedlya very complicated and most importantly a very ungrateful job – “the best” being such a subjective attribute makes the decision-making process very difficult. Yet still many magazines and music websites have recently been publishing lots of “best albums of 2011″ lists – and Simple Plan’s 4th studio album is featured on at least two of them:

Alter The Press

According to Alter The Press, Get Your Heart On! reached the no. 8 spot on their TOP10 list of albums of the year:

“Even after twelve years of being together as a band, Simple Plan still manage the churn out the hits one by one with their fourth full-length studio release, ‘Get Your Heart On’. With songs like ‘Jet Lag’, which has already gone double platinum in Australia alone, this album is one not to be missed and has easily stolen the title for best pop/rock album of the year.”

Not only that – Alter The Press has also declared Simple Plan’s “Jet Lag” the best pop song of the year.

Our Zone Mag

Earlier this year Our Zone Mag gave Get Your Heart On! 9 out of 10 points in their review, calling is “simply awesome”. So it’s no wonder this album made it also to the their list of the best albums of 2011:

“This album marked the band’s return to their core pop-punk sound, which had been overshadowed in their previous couple of releases. Get Your Heart On! really embodies the charms of Simple Plan and has to be one of the best pop/rock albums of the year.

Thanks to my colleagues over at SPB.com here are a few amazing new original photos for the booklet of the Get Your Heart On! album. Some of them you may have seen already on each of the different versions of the official website, on which the guys did a complete makeover of themselves to look like bands like Wham!, The Ramones, RUN DMC and The Beach Boys. Now you can check out all these photos, including the original version of the one used on the front cover of Get Your Heart On!, in the gallery:

The Ministry of Culture in China has released a blacklist of 100 songs that are now banned from China because they “could cause damage to the cultural security of the country” due to their poor taste and vulgar content”. However, the selecting process of these 100 songs still remains a mystery as some of the songs (e.g. from The Backstreet Boys) are over 12 years old.

Among the musicians whose music has been banned in China, Lady Gaga is in the lead with 6 songs in total (The Edge of Glory, Hair, Marry the Night, Americano, Judas and Bloody Mary). Apart from her, the banned songs also include Britney Spears, Owl City, Katy Perry, Eminem, Christina Aguilera, Kylie Minogue and surprisingly even Simple Plan.

Four Simple Plan songs have been banned in China: all of them belonging to their latest record Get Your Heart On!: “You Suck At Love”, “Can’t Keep My Hands Off You”, “Freaking Me Out” and “Loser Of The Year”. According to the Ministry of Culture in China the songs are “too erotic and in bad taste”.

Simple Plan’s drummer , Chuck Comeau, commented on this matter via Twitter: “All i have to say is that I love going to China and i love our chinese fans! and that i feel pretty bad-ass being banned! Is it weird that i’m kinda stoked to be considered ”erotic”???”

What is your opinion on banning music in China? Do you agree Simple Plan’s music is erotic?

The song This Song Saved My Life, also known as the final song of Simple Plan’s latest album “Get Your Heart On!” is definitely one of the songs that are very meaningful to many Simple Plan fans. That’s because it’s about them – it sums up what they feel like when they listen to a certain song of their favourite band or how the song helps them go through rough times, how it changes their lives.

Apart from Chuck and Pierre (Simple Plan’s main songwriters), also Toby Gad (who previously wrote famous hits like “Big Girls Don’t Cry” or “If I Were A Boy”) helped to shape this song into what it is today. The most important contribution, though, were the fans: Simple Plan posted a message on Twitter asking their fans to tell them how their music makes them feel. And using their words they came up with This Song Saved My Life. A few of the fans then had a special opportunity to lend their voices to the song itself in the recording studio and the song was born.

Toby Gad Productions has now published an amazing video showing the writing process of This Song Saved My Life:

The new Simple Plan album – Get Your Heart On!, which came out only two weeks ago, has already gone gold in Canada, which (according to the Canadian Recording Industry Association – CRIA) means 40 000 units sold. Also, Simple Plan’s first single Jet Lag also went gold this week. Congratulations!

The record is indeed doing really well – most importantly in Canada! Get Your Heart On! debuted on the second place in Canadian music stores (with Adele being on the no.1 spot) which means Simple Plan have surpassed Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars or Rihanna in the past few weeks when it comes to weekly sales.

Also, the new album is doing pretty good overseas: it debuted on 10th spot in France and Germany, on no.7 in Switzerland and on 13th in Australia. And According to the US Billboard chart, it’s currently on the 52th place and on the 10th place of the alternative albums sales.

When it comes to the critical reception, according to Metalcritic, which ranks albums according to the reviews gives by other websites, magazines and other kinds of media, from 0 to 100, Simple Plan are currently at 66, which is a pretty positive news.

Even though most of you have probably listened to the new Simple Plan album already – either from the pre-order, from SimplePlan.com or via some less official ways, it’s definitely needless to remind everybody that today – June 21st 2011 – Get Your Heart On! is being officially released and Simple Plan will celebrate its release at a special concert in the New York City. All the most important info that you should know about the album can be found here.

I get a lot of questions from you guys asking me if there is a deluxe edition of the album available somewhere. As I posted earlier, there will be no deluxe edition (like the one you could get for the 3rd SP album) in a physical form. Although there is a deluxe version of the album available in a digital form via iTunes (and also was available via the Ultimate Fan Bundle pre-order), that includes music videos to CKMHOY and JL and also bonus tracks: Never Should’ve Let You Go, French version of Jet Lag and acoustic Loser Of The Year.

There are definitely two versions of the physical form of the album though: one normal (available pretty much everywhere) and one that is being sold in French territories only (and includes the French Jet Lag and a different sticker on the cover). And most probably there is also a special japanese version of the album. Each album also unlocks a special content after being put in to a computer.

And one more thing: at last night’s show in Montreal, Simple Plan played the live version of This Song Saved My Life, which has already (even after the few days of being available online) become something like fans’ anthem to Simple Plan – even if their music has saved their lives, or just changed them. Below you can check out the video from the show and watch the fans’ reactions: