Category Archives: SimplePlan.cz

Year 2021 in the eyes of SimplePlan.cz

by Dominika | Dec 26th, 2021 | 2 comments

Back in 2009 we started this tradition on SimplePlan.cz to recap the entire past year and remind ourselves of all the good and bad that has happened over the course of it. As we all know, 2021 has been just as challenging, if not more, as 2020 but we made it through and even despite the lack of news in the beginning of it, the guys more than made up for it in the second half of this year.

You can check out all the past reviews from 2009 later on over here – 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 – but right now, let’s go ahead, take a deep breath and have a look at everything that happened in 2021!

Here’s the recap of 2021:

Another wave of the covid pandemic has hit the world in the winter of 2020/2021, which meant more social distancing and more isolation. It was no surprise then to not hear from Simple Plan much in the first month of the year. The first news that we got ahold of in 2021 was about We The Kings releasing a brand new song called ‘The Light’, which was co-written by Pierre and Chuck from Simple Plan, and which dealt with mental health issues. Over March and April, another two members of the band – Seb and Chuck – joined Pierre on the platform Cameo and allowed their fans to reach out to them for a small fee to receive a personalized video message from them. To this day, Pierre is still the most active out of them on Cameo.

Things started to get going a bit more in May, when Italian singer GionniScandal released a new song ‘Nicotina’ featuring Pierre Bouvier, who helped Gionni with his music during the pandemic. Simple Plan were also refereced in a new song by young talented singer Chloe Moriondo called ‘Favorite Band’. Pierre and Chuck also appeared in her music video later that year. Pierre definitely wasn’t a stranger to collaborations – as he also appeared in a new ‘Felt Emo Might Delete Later’ skit by Matt Cutshall, where Pierre played the role of Tony Hawk’s Dad.  And finally at the end of May, Simple Plan finally announced the rescheduled dates of their long-awaited Emo’s Still Not Dead tour with New Found Glory in the U.S. Unfortunately, in August, Simple Plan decided to pull out of this fall tour due to fears of the covid situation still not being stable enough – taking in consideration the health of both the fans and the band & their crew.

June was the month when the fans finally got to see Pierre and Chuck getting together for the first time since the pandemic started. Summer was rather slow when it came to major SP news, but then in August, SimplePlan.cz celebrated 14 years online right before things became interesting again. September came around and American singer Chad Tepper released first a new song and later also a music video featuring Pierre Bouvier called ‘I Hate Everybody’. The duo got very close over the summer and has been seen spending lots of time together over the following months as well. In September 2021, all four members of the Simple Plan finally got together for the first time since February 2020 when Jeff and Seb came to Los Angeles to start working on some promotional materials for the fall before the release of their first new music in years. They also performed their very first “post-pandemic” show in Chicago at Riot Fest in September. 

Things started really picking up speed from then on. In October, we finally found out the release date, artwork and the title of the very first song from Simple Plan’s upcoming album – ‘The Antidote’ would be released on November 5th. Pierre however gave fans a little preview of the song ahead of that date when he performed a bit of ‘The Antidote’ on TikTok Live with Papa Roach. A couple days later in October, Simple Plan also announced a big Canadian tour with The Offspring in early 2022.

November 5th was finally the day that so many fans have been waiting for for years – Simple Plan’s new song ‘The Antidote’ was out on all the streaming platforms. And it has been received very well both from the media and from the band’s fanbase. The song brought in lots of nostalgic elements but with a modern pop punk twist to it and within the first week, it has already reached over a million streams on Spotify. With the promotional frenzy around ‘The Antidote’ going full-speed, we also got to have a look at the brand new promotional photoshoot as well as many new interviews with the band.

In November, another artist referenced Simple Plan in their song – this time the band As It Is in the pop punk anthem ‘I Miss 2003’. Pierre’s long-time collaboration with his neighbour, talented young singer Beckett McDowell paid off when he released themusic video for the new song ‘Weirdo’ from his new album, that was produced by Pierre, who also had a little cameo in the video. Simple Plan became very active in November: they launched a brand new merchstore with some new merch items, filmed the music video for ‘The Antidote’ and also finally made their old Christmas song ‘My Christmas List’ available for streaming on Spotify just in time for Christmas. Finally, in December the band got back together again in LA for a number of promotional things, as well as to perform a full concert for Mola Chills and to become the special final guests at Emo Nite‘s 7th anniversary event.

And what can we expect from 2022?

2021 has been a very challenging and with the pandemic still not being over and new variants popping up, the future is still not very clear. As far as touring goes, Simple Plan are being positive about the situation: From end of January till beginning of March, they are heading out on a cross-country tour in Canada supporting The Offspring. Of course, since Canada has put a number of restriction in place in number of its provinces recently to help stop the spread of the Omicron variant, it is unclear whether this tour will be able to take place. As of right now, no changes have been announced and the tour seem to still be on. We will keep you in the loop if anything changes. The band’s plans for the next few months then include a bunch of festival dates – in April (Mexico), May (Texas, US) and June (Canada). Also, according to the band’s TikTok replies, it seems that they are working on some U.S. dates too.

2022 should be a big year for Simple Plan no matter what, though – the band is finally ready to release their new album but before they do, they aim to release at least two more songs. One of them could be the theme song to the reality show The Fashion Hero, which should air in January. So far it looks like the album could be out in the first half of the year. Finger’s crossed. Before any new song comes out however, the fans should finally get to see the new music video for ‘The Antidote’ which will be released very soon – either by the end of 2021 or in the first weeks of 2022.

Of course with new album comes lots of new content, so we cannot wait to keep you up to date on all things involving the release process. There will be an artwork to look forward to as well as the title, the tracklist and lots of other content that will give us more information about the songs that Simple Plan have been impatiently sitting all for the entirety of this pandemic.

2022 will be our 15th year online and we welcome all of you to join us on the ride.

As always, stay tuned for more! We promise you have so much to look forward to!

SimplePlan.cz celebrates 14 years online!

by Dominika | Aug 13th, 2021 | 1 comment

That’s right! SimplePlan.cz has been your trusted source of information about Simple Plan, news, photos, videos, interviews and mostly – a community for Simple Plan fans – for 14 years now.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without you all. Thank you, everyone, for sticking around, showing the website love on social media and elsewhere. I love this “job” so much and even 14 years on I am still happy to continue doing this for years to come.

Better days are coming – with any luck the SP news drought will finally be over as we finally have some news-worthy times ahead – Simple Plan are heading out on tour at the end of this month, so you can expect everything and anything as per usual (if you’re attending any of the upcoming shows, hit us up! I’d love to post about your first-hand reviews). I can’t wait to bring you all the fresh info as always. And we’re all obviously still hoping for some news about the 6th SP album. More on that hopefully “soon” :). Lots more to come, we cannot wait what the future has in store for us and Simple Plan.

Thanks again for all your love and support for the past 14 years.

Year 2020 in the eyes of SimplePlan.cz

by Dominika | Dec 28th, 2020 | no comments

For the past 12 years, ever since SimplePlan.cz started, we’ve been putting out recaps of the past year every December to summarize everything important or interesting that has happened over the course of the year in the world of Simple Plan news. Obviously, even despite the whirlwind of 2020, it was important for us to continue with this tradition and in the course of writing the recap, we reminded ourselves of all the interesting and positive things that did happen in 2020… even if the negative ones might have overshadowed them.

You can check out all the past reviews from 2009 later on over here – 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 – but right now, let’s go ahead, take a deep breath and have a look at everything that happened in 2020!

Here’s the recap of 2020:

Believe it or not, 2020 started off pretty great! In January, the boys headed back to the recording studio to finish 4 more songs for their upcoming 6th album and it was also announced that the album would be co-produced by three people: Pierre Bouvier, Brian Howes and JVP. At that point, it was planned that the album would come out probably in the middle or the second half of the year.

The boys hurried up in the studio, because they had to have everything done by February, when they headed off to the United Kingdom, which ended up to be their only touring endeavour this year. Simple Plan joined the headliners Bowling For Soup on their tour, which was eventually all sold out. While in the UK, Simple Plan announced another exciting tour: a co-headlining tour with New Found Glory across the United States, initially planned for May/June 2020. Some of the shows got sold out almost immediately and more had to be added – that’s how excited the American fans were about this particular tour.

But as luck would have it… we all know what happened next. In March, COVID-19 spread all across the world, quickly turning into a worldwide pandemic and changing the lives of every single one of us, one way or another. All future appearances and tours slowly got canceled, as it became more and more clear that we will not be going back to our normal lives as quickly, as we initially hoped. But let’s add at least one positive thing about March – Silverstein’s new album (‘A Beautiful Place To Drown’) was released on March 8th and Pierre Bouvier’s voice was featured on a pretty cool song called ‘Take What You Give’.

In April, just like all of us, the band continued staying at home and some of the band members started finding new things to do to kill the time – the most active of all being Pierre. Pierre first appeared in Neck Deep’s new music video called ‘When You Know’, which was done in a very quarantining and social distancing way and later on in the month he also first joined the platform Cameo, where anyone can hire personalities to send them a personalized greeting. To keep their fans’ spirits up, Simple Plan decided to release the fully filmed show from the No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls 15th anniversary tour called ‘Live in Anaheim’ online for free on their YouTube channel for all fans to watch and enjoy.

Around mid-April, something amazing happened: Simple Plan’s old hit ‘I’m Just A Kid’ suddenly blew up on TikTok, as people started using the song in the new #ImJustAKidchallenge, in which (out of quarantine boredom) they decided to recreate old family photos in the 2020 setting. The song became so huge, it also affected its streams on Spotify and YouTube going up, eventually turning it Platinum in the U.S. in May. Simple Plan decided to then join TikTok as well, and from the safety of the Canadian and U.S. homes and latest technologies – they managed to create a bunch of I’m Just A Kid TikToks as well – some of them even with all members ‘together’.

Besides dealing with the sudden TikTok fame, Pierre also mentioned that SP were almost ready to release some new material soon (which didn’t happen, likely because of what came next in July) and it was also announced that Simple Plan were finished with their 6th album – with its release however being pending due to the on-going pandemic.

So far, the first half of 2020 was pretty eventful, considering the situation. That has however drastically changed in July, when certain sexual misconduct allegations against David Desrosiers came into the light and on July 10th, just a day after the allegations were posted online, David himself announced that he is withdrawing from the band, apologizing for the “harm he has caused to women” and promising to seek help. With this shocking statement to many, the remaining members of the band decided to take some time off to “pause, reflect and put in place guidelines to prevent similar situations from happening”. And that was the last we heard of them all the way until October.

Finally in October, Simple Plan returned online after a 3-month hiatus, keeping their word and announcing a set of changes and guidelines that will be put in place from now on for every show and every performance in order to prevent any wrong-doing and to promote inclusivity and safety at their shows. From this statement and many others that followed from October until now, the message from Simple Plan has been clear and consistent – David is no longer part of the band and the band is now trying to move on as a foursome: with Pierre, Chuck, Jeff and Sebastien. With the band being back, fans have also cheered the return of Sebastien’s (and Patrick’s) podcast Man Of The Hour for another season after a pause, also caused by the band’s hiatus from any online setting. And best news at the end: the band has confirmed that the final mixes of the new album have now also been finished.

And what can we expect from 2021?

It is clear that today, there’s much more uncertainty about the future than ever before. But still – since the vaccine against COVID-19 is already being administered to thousands of people all over the world and millions in the upcoming months, we are slowly moving towards a safer future.

And in time, there will hopefully come a moment, when we will all gather at a show without having to wear a mask or social distance again. We are hoping that the return of live music could happen at least in the second half of 2021 but the question is: what will touring look like after the pandemic? Will meet&greets still be a thing? Will negative tests or proofs of vaccination be necessary to enter a concert venue? Those questions will surely have to be answered eventually.

But as far as Simple Plan concerns, the band has had the past 6 months to deal with the departure of their bassist. We can imagine, of course, that such a big change must come with tons of other issues – whether personal, financial or legal. The question of David’s participation on the 6th album still remains uncertain, as he did record his parts, so it is likely he will be credited on the record (unless they decided to rerecord his parts, which is unlikely). More than likely however, the band will just go on without him as a four piece and promote the album that way. Whether the band will eventually acquire a new bassist or hire just a touring musician to help out with the bass parts at live shows is still unknown.

Overall, the main goal for 2021 for Simple Plan should be the final release of their 6th album, which fans have been waiting for for incredible 5 years… A lot has changed since then – but given the recent huge success of other artists in Simple Plan’s niche – namely All Time Low or Yungblund – we believe there is still place for Simple Plan in today’s music scene.

Let’s see what 2021 brings..

Stay tuned for more news!

SimplePlan.cz celebrates 13 years online!

by Dominika | Aug 13th, 2020 | no comments

While we continue living in weird times, we wanted to take this moment and celebrate with you the 13th anniversary of this website. Oh, and it has surely been a ride! Since 2007 SimplePlan.cz has been working hard on bringing you the latest news, reminding you of important anniversaries on our social media channels, sharing with your our own reports from Simple Plan concerts as well as our own interviews and so much more. And I’ve loved every part of it. And still do.

And even if times are still uncertain, the music industry is struggling and Simple Plan are currently facing many important changes, SimplePlan.cz is still here. And we want to continue being here and help support the band that has been such an important part of our life (and so many of yours). As always, we would like to say the biggest thanks to you – the fans. Without you, this website wouldn’t be here. Thanks for all the continuous support, I appreciate it tremendously.

Boys, if you’re reading this – thank you for everything. I’m standing by the four of you and I can’t wait to see what the next chapter holds for you.

Here’s to another 13+ years!

Thank you & hopefully, see you all at a safe show in the future! <3

How to make the most out of quarantine (as a Simple Plan fan)?

by Dominika | Mar 26th, 2020 | no comments

Quarantine, social isolation… no matter what you call it, most of us – who’re not capable of being the supermans out there saving the world – probably have too much free time on their hands: we can’t go to concerts, enjoy a picnic or go out for a beer with a couple friends. And that’s good. Even though times are hard, we have to follow the rules places upon us and try to help get this situation under control as quickly as possible. So that we can once again go out in the streets, meet each other, go to concerts and appreciate life even more than before.

So if you’re bored out of your mind and would like some help figuring out what to do, we decided to bring you a couple of tips – for all you Simple Plan fans out there. And make sure to read until the very end, where we’ve even prepared a little quiz for you!

Let’s have a look at them:

Before you start anything: WASH YOUR HANDS

Yeah, yeah, yeah… we know you’ve heard it a million times before, but we cannot forget this one. You must have heard already that you should be washing your hands multiple times in a day, always for at least 20 seconds. Now, many of you have heard that you can could those 20 seconds by either singing Happy Birthday twice, or singing the first part of My Chemical Romance’s Welcome To The Black Parade. But if you’re not a big birthday person and MCR are not your cup of tea, we have another solution for you. Did you know that the chorus to ‘Addicted’ by Simple Plan is exactly 20 seconds long? Try singing it next time you wash your hands. We’ve even posted a little how-to guide on our Instagram.

JOIN SIMPLE PLAN MEMBERS IN THEIR ISOLATION (ONLINE)!

Even the members of Simple Plan are abiding by the rules and are self-isolating at home. And how are they spending their time, you ask? Jeff, for instance, decided to use his free time to practice playing his guitar and doesn’t just keep it to himself! Once again, he decided to start recording himself playing the guitar. Check out his Cabin Fever Sessions on his Instagram!

Pierre and Sebastien then went one step further and decided to each do an Instagram live stream, where they answered some questions, played some music and even invited some fans to join them and chat for a little while. But if you’ve missed the past few live streams, have no worries, they will surely do another one again soon! So far, Pierre has done two streams in the past two days plus made an appearance in a live stream on his wife Lachelle’s channel. More’s to come! Make sure you follow Pierre, Seb and Lachelle on Instagram!

You should also definitely not forget to follow Simple Plan on Instagram, as they’ve also recently mentioned they want to start posting some old photos they manage to dig up as well as some old footage – “to make you smile and give you a place to go when you want to remember what life was like before this crazy virus.”

ENTERTAIN YOURSELF WITH MUSIC, BOOKS & VIDEOS!

This one may seem like an obvious one, but it’s definitely worth a mention. Music can be quite an impressive cure for anxiety, loneliness and various other issues we’re all facing right now. So turn up the volume and put your favorite songs on again!

TIP: We’re pretty sure many of you don’t remember the lyrics as much as you once have, so why not re-learn them again! Visit our lyrics section, where you can even read up on the meanings of most of the songs, as well as watch the music videos and sing-along with the added lyrics!

And if you’re ready to learn some more info about the band, you can always rewatch some of our interviews with Simple Plan, which we’ve done over the years. Since we always try to come up with some unique questions, these may be a good source of interesting facts for you to get to know the band a little better!

A great source of more information about Simple Plan is obviously their biography – Simple Plan: The Official Story. The guys have actually put it back up on their merch store (in French and also in English), so if you haven’t grabbed it yet, get it now and dive into this amazing collection of materials from Simple Plan’s history. Definitely worth a read! [here’s our review of it, if you’re still deciding]

And last but not the least, if you’re seriously missing concerts right now, there’s plenty of options to get some live Simple Plan music into your life! There’s always the DVD – A Big Package For You – in case you need some complex old school SP fix. For live shows only, we definitely recommend watching Simple Plan’s 2005 performance at MTV Hard Rock Live or their 2012 Live in Australia footage they released on YouTube.

KEEP IN TOUCH WITH YOUR SP FRIENDS & FIND NEW ONES!

Just because we can’t be around each other doesn’t mean we can’t be there for each other. Text your mates or use this time to call them up, or maybe even Skype with those you haven’t seen in a while and ask them how they are doing. Perhaps you can even finally call your foreign friends and check up on them and maybe practice your English skills a little bit, while being in a company of someone you like and having someone to talk to about the issues you’re facing. Or even better: to cheer each other up.

Maintaining communication with your loved ones is especially important for your mental health. That is why you should make sure you stay in touch with your friends – both for your and their well-being.

And what if you don’t have any friends from the fandom? This is the best time to find new ones! Engage in discussions under social media posts, search for people posting Simple Plan related posts under the #simpleplan hashtag and contact the people you find interesting. Who knows, maybe you’ll even find your new concert buddy!

TAKE OUR QUIZ & SEE HOW WELL YOU KNOW SIMPLE PLAN!

And if you still don’t know what to do with your free time, we’ve prepared a pretty hard Simple Plan quiz for you – to see how much you’ve been paying attention. We’re looking forward to seeing your results – make sure to tag us is you post them on social media! :)