Simple Plan have officially closed the chapter of the 2016 European Taking One For The Team tour, which was divided into two parts with a short break [and shows in Japan] inbetween. During the overall almost 2 months of touring (throughout a part of February, March and May), the band visited 18 European countries in total, which included: Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
For both parts of the tour, the band brought the opening band The Bottom Line, who became good friends with SP and who started the tradition of invading SP’s party medleys in themed costumes. Besides The Bottom Line, the attendees of the first part of the tour were able to see Ghost Town, and the second leg welcomed ROAM, and eventually also Blind Channel and MadCraft.
One of the specifics of this tour for the first time in years was the interchangeability of Simple Plan’s setlist. In the past, it wasn’t very common for SP to change anything on their setlist, so the fans who attended more than one show usually heard the same songs again and again. With the rise of ‘travelling fans’ in the past few months, the band decided to switch things up at every show and rotate a number of songs each time. Among the rotating songs on this tour were songs like: ‘Take My Hand’, ‘I Refuse’, ‘Kiss Me Like Nobody’s Watching’, ‘Your Love Is A Lie’, ‘Nostalgic’ and ‘Farewell’.
The one big difference between the setlists of the first and second leg of the European tour was the ommiting of ‘The Rest Of Us’ [which was played on the 1st leg] and the replacing of this song by the band’s new single ‘Singing In The Rain’. Besides that, on the first leg, the band also used to alternate between This Song Saved My Life and Astronaut, which were both played without any drums. That stopped during the second leg, where the band played TSSML exclusively (however still without drums).
The guys also pulled off a number of surprises with interesting additions to the setlist on a number of dates. This way, the fans were also able to hear rarities on Simple Plan’s setlist, which included: ‘Everything Sucks’, I Don’t Wanna Go To Bed, ‘Me Against The World’, Thank You, ‘The Worst Day Ever’ or ‘My Alien’.
It was also important to add the element of fun and party to the show, so as always, Simple Plan introduced a brand new party medley, which is a Simple Plan version of a mash-up of covers of various popular contemporary songs. On this tour, the medley featured Mark Ronson’s/Bruno Mars’ ‘Uptown Funk’ and The Weeknd’s ‘Can’t Feel My Face’.
During the tour, the guys also constantly updated their social media profiles – Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. On Instagram, the guys kept us updated with gorgeous behind the scenes pictures and photoshoots from the tour, taken by the band’s two photographers: Chady and Sim. And because it’s hard to specify on which dates/occasions some of the pictures on Instagram were taken, I decided to gather them all up in one album. Check out all the cool official shots below:
And what’s next for Simple Plan?
It’s time for Simple Plan to come home to get some rest and spend time with their families. But not for long! The band will be back on the road at the end of next week, when they will start a little promo run of acoustic sets in the United States. After that they have the whole summer ahead of them, which will be filled with countless appearances at Canadian festivals and also a tour across Mexico. You can check out all the upcoming dates in this section.
While the band’s plans for the rest of the year have not been announced yet, it has already been mentioned many times that Simple Plan are planning to expand their Taking One For The Team world tour to Canada, U.S., Australia and Asia till the end of the year. South America has also been named in a few recent interviews, its timing is however still unknown, but quite possibly it will be early next year.
But don’t worry, Europe! SP won’t stay off of the old continent for too long. They will be back for a second round of the world tour again in Europe – next year!
Simple Plan have quite a history with both of these bands – Pierre used to sing on stage with The Used on the 2003 Warped Tour and the bands played together many times over the past almost two decades. And even richer history can be found when it comes to Simple Plan and Blink-182: Chuck got to know Mark Hoppus back when he was still in Reset and Mark was also one of the first people to ever hear one of the first demos of ‘I’d Do Anything’ [just called ‘Anything’ at that point], which he loved and which is why the band later on asked him to sing on the song as well as appear in the music video. Since then, Blink-182 and Simple Plan have appeared alongside many times, both on and off stage and the band members have kept in touch.