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:
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”!
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:
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:
