The question whether Simple Plan are a pop band or a pop-punk band has been here for years. Let’s drop the band labels for a bit and concentrate on their songs in particular: there is no denying that recent Simple Plan albums include a few pieces that could be considered more “poppy” than others (e.g. Fire In My Heart, Outta My System) but the band have been always trying to balance them with the more old school pop-punk sounding songs (e.g. Ordinary Life, The Rest Of Us) that that remind more of their music from their first and their second album. But how will that continue with album no.5 for which the guys are currently writing songs for?

AMH Network recently did an interview with Pierre and Chuck at their Warped Tour stop in Canberra, Australia and talked more about this particular pop/punk-rock “problem”. Both members of Simple Plan mentioned a couple times in the interview that the directing for album no.5 should still be focusing on this balance of the songs, but while trying to go even more to their pop-punk roots than they did with “Get Your Heart On!”

Chuck: We have a lot of fans who are like: “I love the new song and the new record, but I love your first album style or the whole second record vibe, so I want you guys to do more rock.” And some fans are like: “I love your more pop songs!” So it’s a very interesting line for us cause we love doing fast, in-your-face kind of songs and we love doing the more pop songs and more like emotional songs as well. So, every record’s like a balance between those two-three things that we really love doing.

Pierre: I think for us it’s always a balance cause we love to do pop songs. I love to listen to stuff that’s like… Taylor Swift or stuff like that. Love that! I mean, it’s not what I am, but I enjoy it, so it’s cool to be able to kind of do some of the pop stuff but always have that punk-rock energy. But I think that definitely for the next album, we might go even more back to our pop-punk roots

The above transcribed excerpt comes from mark 3:40 of the interview and I definitely recommend you to watch the full version of it here: