5 Seconds Of Summer Looks Back At Working With One Direction, Why They Hesitated Going On Tour With The Boy Band

The boys of 5 Seconds of Summer might have wrapped their second concert tour, “Sounds Live Feels Live,” but Luke Hemmings, Calum Hood, Michael Clifford, and Ashton Irwin are not stopping anytime soon. In a new interview, 5SOS looked back at how scared they were headlining for One Direction, recalling how no one knew who they were.

In 2013, 5 Seconds of Summer opened for One Direction’s tour, “Take Me Home.” Guitarist Michael Clifford told The Sacramento Bee that it was a “really scary” experience for everyone, opening for one of the biggest boy bands in the world. In spite of the jitters, 5SOS saw this as a great opportunity, not just to gain a following, but to improve their music. Clifford added that they learned how to interact with fans better.

“When we started that tour in 2013, no one knew who we were. We kind of had to build that by getting better and better and better live. It was kind of all we cared about for a long time was just how we could become a better live band, play better and have the audience interact more and stuff like that. But coming back to like this year now, we see how many shows we played on that One-D tour and how much it helped us to like craft our performance into what we wanted it to be.”

5 Seconds of Summer first started making waves online after posting several covers on Hemmings’ YouTube channel. It did not take long before they attracted quite a number of followers, including One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson. In 2012, he shared a link of 5SOS’ “Gotta Get Out” cover, tweeting he had been a fan of the band for a while. A couple of months after, 1D asked them to headline their 2013 tour, “Take Me Home.”

While opening for One Direction was definitely going to be quite an opportunity for 5 Seconds of Summer, Clifford admitted that they were hesitant to accept it at first. Being a punk-pop band, they were worried of being labeled as a boy band/teen pop group. The pros, however, undoubtedly outweigh the cons and realized that this is the big break they had been waiting for all along. Clifford held that touring with One Direction is definitely a decision they would never regret, as the band enabled them to reach a wider set of audience.

“I think we had our moments of doubt in thinking about that. But honestly, we’d be so stupid not to take that [One Direction tour] up because I never thought we would be playing in venues bigger than like 1,500 in Australia. By doing that, it really opened up, the platform it gave us was just like huge,” Clifford said.

Although some would still label 5 Seconds of Summer as a boy band, Clifford hoped that listening to their sophomore album Sounds Good Feels Good would eventually changed their minds. He explained that they were slowly easing their fans to a “new type of rock or a new type of pop rock.”

“We’re kind of going to keep pushing the bar as far as we can. I think that’s what we always wanted to do, like bring guitars back to radio.”

While 5 Seconds of Summer may have learned a thing or two about performing live from One Direction, The Seattle Times’ Owen Smith seemed less than thrilled at their show in White River Amphitheatre last August 28. Smith called the show “bland” and “uninspired.” He held that perhaps the bar was set higher when Goldfinger frontman John Feldmann called 5SOS the “best pop-punk bad he’s ever heard.” Smith held that Feldmann’s statement invited a direct comparison to some of pop-punk’s legendary acts like Blink-182 and Green Day.

“Those groups created iconic hits that defined an era, but 5 Seconds of Summer felt like a band still trying to grasp what made their heroes special in the first place,” he wrote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QACdwwFfm_4

[Photo by Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images]