Category Archives: 6th album

Pierre about new album: Simple Plan might release some new material “pretty soon”

AUTHOR: Dominika | 29. May 2020 | 1 comment

Just a few days ago, Nick Major from Idobi Radio got in touch with Pierre Bouvier from Simple Plan over videochat and together they discussed Simple Plan’s old hit ‘I’m Just A Kid’ becoming viral on TikTok and also Simple Plan’s upcoming 6th studio album.

In the interview, Pierre confirmed that the album is done and the band is now looking for ways to release it in the current climate. One of the things besides not being able to promote it on tour, that is still holding the release back is the fact that Simple Plan are in the talks of getting a new record deal with a new record label. But once that is settled, the guys still need to figure out in what way the album would be getting released. Read what Pierre said exactly on this matter below:

Nick: Are you guys holding off on the new album release just to wait till you’re able to tour on it?

Pierre: We’ve talked about what we’re gonna do… There was talks of like holding it off for a bit and there was talks of like we can’t hold it off because we don’t know how long it’s gonna be and right now we’re just kind of figuring out like how we’re gonna release it. Like… we’re in the middle of getting another record deal right now so it’s kind of not that we’re holding it off, it’s more that we’re just trying to […] plan it and figure out, you know, do we release it all at once? Do we do a couple of EPs? Do we break it up? You know, it’s because now there’s so many different ways to put out a record. You could put out a song every week, you could put out twelve at once… so it’s a matter of just figuring that out.

Of course until then, the guys plan on staying active online in various other ways – according to Pierre, the band has some online performances planned, a bunch of interviews and they also wanna continue recreating their own old photos on TikTok, keeping the viral trend going.

But what about a single? Could we perhaps expect some new material before the full record (in whichever way) drops? According to Pierre: YES! And maybe even “pretty soon”!

Nick: That’s awesome and with this TikTok stuff going on, oh, not a bad time to release one of the new songs off the album..

Pierre: Yeah, it’s not a bad time to release it. And I think like, I don’t wanna… we haven’t talked about this and I’m sure that Chuck will be listening to this and going like: ‘Dude, shut up!’ But like, I think that we’ll be putting out some stuff pretty soon. We’re not gonna be waiting that long and yeah, just kind of hopping on the TikTok momentum. And also, it’s time, you know? It’s been a long time and we don’t wanna sit on these songs. We want people to hear them when they feel fresh and they feel good.

And in the final quote we decided to extract from the interview, Pierre discussed how happy and excited he is about the new Simple Plan songs, explaining that this is the record he’s probably put the most of himself into, especially since he’s also producing it for the first time (with Zakk Cervini, Brian Howes and JVP). Check out how Pierre himself feels about the album:

Nick: Album no. 6, man! You perfectionists: are you guys happy with what you’ve created with this one at least? Does it meet the standards of Simple Plan?

Pierre: This is to me, I think, by far, one of the albums that I’m the most proud of. Because… like I’ve always been very very involved with every album. Obviously, I’m one of the main songwriters of the band and since album two, which was 2004, Still Not Getting Any, I’ve been sort of producing our demos. So I write the songs with Chuck, we’ve brought in some extra songwriters here and there… But I pretty much for 99% of our songs, I am the one building the skeleton, building the prototype, building what it’s gonna sound like in my computer, recording everything. And then I take it to the band and then the band rerecord everything. So for this album I’ve done it more than ever, a lot of my production is on the album, I’m actually a producer on this album and I feel like as a person, as a musician, as a producer, I’ve really come into my own at this point, you know… I’ve been doing this for long enough, where I’m starting to feel like I’ve mastered my craft.. Not mastered, but.. you know, I’m doing well.

And I feel really.. I feel like I’m the most part of this album. Like this is the most that I’ve given personally to an album and I think I’m very proud of it and I think it sounds great. I think the songs are great, the songwriting is great and I feel like the fans… there’s like I would say four or five, maybe six songs that the fans are gonna lose their shit over. Like, I think that they’re gonna be really really happy. And that’s always a challenge, because a band in the pop punk era, you know, you want.. I love pop punk music, I always have. When a pop punk song comes out that’s awesome, it’s always my favorite genre. But, you also want to like keep yourself fresh. I don’t wanna keep making the same record over and over again, so we always try to do different things. And you know, that can sometimes backfire on us… or it could be ‘whoa that was so cool’! And on this album I feel like we’ve really hit the pop punk sort of what they all want. And then we did some things that are a little bit off there, but they’re out there in a cool way. They’re not out there and like “eww, that’s kind of pop”, you know what I mean? It’s like we’re pushing the envelope in a way that I think fans are gonna be stoked about.

And yeah, I’m just fully 100% behind. I think the songwriting is some of our best lyrically, some really awesome honest lyrics in there. And the production: we’ve got Zakk Cervini mix most of it. And he produced one song. Then we have myself and another guy Jay [note: Jason ‘JVP’ Van Poederooyen] that produced a bunch of songs and it’s sounding like, in my opinion, one of our best records.

If you’re interested, you can watch Nick’s entire interview with Pierre below:

Simple Plan officially finished with 6th album: release pending due to COVID-19

AUTHOR: Dominika | 21. May 2020 | no comments

We’re sure many of you have asked yourselves the question: “When the hell are Simple Plan finally coming out with that new album of theirs? It’s been forever!” And we absolutely wouldn’t blame you. It’s true – Simple Plan’s last record (Taking One For The Team) came out 4 years ago and ever since fall of 2018, the boys have been working hard on their next studio effort and finally reached the studio in the summer of 2019 and then again this January for some final recordings.

So where is the record? In his recent Instagram Live stream, Simple Plan’s lead singer Pierre Bouvier was asked by one of the fans when they can expect the new record to be released, to which Pierre confirmed the official completion of the album. He replied:

“The album is done! Pretty much… We’re just figuring out how to release it and what we’re gonna do.. That’s the real question. Cause right now is a very weird time. We can just put it out, but how do we support it? How do we go on tour? You know…”

– Pierre Bouvier –

Originally, the album was promised to be out in spring/summer 2020, but unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the entire world, separated all the band members, isolating them in their homes in Canada and the U.S., and overall had a major negative impact on the touring industry. Public gatherings in most countries are banned, social isolation is recommended and therefore due to the inability to hold live concerts, many bands and their crew members have now lost their work opportunities. Live Nation has in fact set up a relief fund for struggling crew members (sound and instrument technicians, merch guys, lighting directors…) – if you’d like to donate, you can do so here.

But why can’t they just release the album on Spotify, if it’s all ready to go, you ask? As Pierre mentioned in his reply, they obviously could do that very easily – but as Simple Plan consider themselves a touring band, their most important asset is their live performances. So a promotion in the form of live performances – whether it’s concerts, festivals or radio appearances – is super important in order to spread the word about the new album and promote it to new (and old) fans before its release. In short: without promotion, Simple Plan would lose the opportunity to reach out to new audiences with an album they put 2 years of work into. And if they released the record now and toured half a year later, no-one would be as excited to hear the new songs as they would have been when the record just dropped.

Of course, there is also the issue of Simple Plan not having signed to a new record label just yet – under which the record should be released (since their Atlantic Records deal ended with their 5th album). The potential input of the record label when it comes to the promotion of the new record is also very important to take in consideration. As of right now, there are no official news about Simple Plan signing with a new label just yet, so the doors are still open for SP.

Looks like we’re gonna have to wait just a little longer to hear new SP music – until things calm down a bit. If you’re interested to know more about the 6th studio album that Simple Plan have been working on hard for the past few years, have a look at our special section, where we’ve gathered all the news and information we know about the album so far:

Info about album #6

Simple Plan and New Found Glory announce co-headlining summer tour in the U.S.

AUTHOR: Dominika | 11. February 2020 | 1 comment

Just as we have guessed a few days ago after both Simple Plan and New Found Glory changed their social media profile pictures to the same illustration of a slice of pizza, the two pop-punk legends have just announced a co-headlining tour together!

Simple Plan and New Found Glory will be hitting the U.S. stages in May and June this year with their “Pop Punk’s Still Not Dead” tour and will be tagging Knuckle Puck along as an opening act! That means this is likely to be the first tour that Simple Plan might go on with their new studio album, which is set to be released either in spring or summer 2020.

The tour is also accompanied by a poster, featuring the previously posted illustration of a piece of pizza, which is victoriously levitating over a number of pop-punk loving skeletons. Check out the full version of this poster here.

Be first to get the tickets for this tour by using the pre-sale code PPND – pre-sale tickets are already available here.

Check out the video Pierre Bouvier from Simple Plan and Jordan Pundik from New Found Glory filmed recently documenting how they came up with the idea of a tour together. 100% not fake news:

All tourdates of the “Pop Punk’s Still Not Dead” tour can be found below:

Simple Plan’s and New Found Glory’s change of social media profile pictures triggers rumors about possible tour / collab

AUTHOR: Dominika | 9. February 2020 | 1 comment

In an unexpected turn of events, both Simple Plan and New Found Glory have changed their official profile picture on all of their social medias at the same time today to a cartoon featuring a victorious slice of pizza. The image can now be seen on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages. While Simple Plan’s cartoon is placed on a black background, New Found Glory’s places on a white background. Pizza is of course a long-standing symbol for pop-punk in general. It is also fair to note that this change happened on February 9th, which is known to be the “National Pizza Day”.

This sudden change of profile photo of course immediately triggered rumours in both fandoms about possible collaboration or tour featuring both of these well-known pop-punk bands. Both Simple Plan and New Found Glory are set to release new albums this year so a collaboration of some sort wouldn’t be entirely impossible idea. Especially given that the members of the bands have already collaborated before – Jordan Pundik, New Found Glory’s lead singer, was featured on Simple Plan’s last album ‘Taking One For The Team’, where he sang on the song ‘Farewell’.

Since neither Simple Plan nor New Found Glory have posted any explanation to this change or why both these bands used the same cartoon, we are left wondering and can only wait for a proper explanation hopefully soon.

Travis Clark revealed secrets behind the song-writing process with Chuck and Pierre in new Alternative Press interview

AUTHOR: Dominika | 5. February 2020 | no comments

In a brand new interview for Alternative Press, We The Kings’ lead singer and also a talented song-writer Travis Clark talked about his recent writing collaborations with other artists – such as Avril Lavigne, Machine Gun Kelly or Simple Plan. For Simple Plan, Travis has been writing with Pierre and Chuck in California on and off for almost year and half during countless songwriting sessions. All that mostly for Simple Plan’s upcoming album.

During the interview, Travis was asked about his collaboration with both Simple Plan and State Champs on their collaborative song ‘Where I Belong’ and how the songwriting process worked “with so many minds in one room trying to put together a song”. This was Travis’ answer:

“So we knew that the tour was going to happen, and then Simple Plan had this idea. They were just like, “Hey, we’re all friends with each other. It would be really cool to attach a song to this tour and have us all be a part of it.”

With “Where I Belong” specifically, I think Pierre [Bouvier, Simple Plan vocalist] and Chuck [Comeau, Simple Plan drummer] had an overall skeleton idea of the song. And they brought Derek [DiScanio, State Champs vocalist] in to write some of the production and some of his lyrics that he sang in the second verse. And then they basically had that song finished and completed other than the recording of it. They were like, “Trav, would you want to do the bridge?” And all of our voices sound relatively similar to each other, so you want to piece it together part by part. And so we all decided that it’d probably be best if I sang the bridge and did that together so that every person had their part in it. But as far as the rest, We The Kings didn’t record any drums or guitars. We didn’t do anything other than sing vocals. And I think it was probably similar for State Champs.”

– Travis Clark [Alternative Press interview] –

Working with Simple Plan was mentioned one other time during the interview and that was when Travis was asked about what his take on collaborating with someone is and how he approaches the way the ideas come about. Travis explained that sometimes is just comes organically after listening to the artist’s story and background (such as Avril Lavigne and her battle with Lyme disease) and the lyrics just roll out. However, according to Travis, with Simple Plan, sometimes ideas came from collective brainstormings and finding just the right word or phrase that the song could be written around. See how Travis explained this interesting process below:

“And other times, it’s different. When I was working with the Simple Plan dudes, it was myself, Pierre and Chuck. And Chuck would sit there, and he would just scroll through his phone and have all these one-word or two-word ideas that could eventually [become the] title of a song. It was funny because it really would kick-start the whole writing session. We did a couple [of] songs that could only exist because he said one word.”

– Travis Clark [Alternative Press interview] –