To be inspired is the ultimate antidote to existential despair.
Simple Plan`s trademark is pretty easy. By the time the song ends, you can sing it. It doesn't take 20 listens. It's hard to write those songs but we try our best.
We've always had a lot of different influences and we've always liked catchy music from the Beatles to Cheap Trick to Elvis Costello.
I think the big thing for Simple Plan is that we were able to keep the band members, the same five guys, the same lineup from the start. That's not easy. We grew up together. We're friends. We come from the same world. We've always had the same dreams and goals. I think we realized, as the years go by, how precious it is to have that, to build that, to see so many bands break up. . . it makes us realize how different we are to all that. We're really proud of that.
It's always been about the songs for us. It doesn't matter about all the image stuff. We're really about making songs that people can relate to, that we love, that they will love, that we will enjoy playing live.
Sometimes you just have to sit down a lot and make sure everyone's cool. If someone has an issue, you make sure they don't keep it inside. That's been the model of the Simple Plan.
We just wanted to make albums where every song stands out and is different. It must not be the same track from one to 12.
No amount of smiling at a flight of stairs has ever made it turn into a ramp.
Reading is the occupation of the insomniac par excellence.
A man does not entreat for love. It is the irresistible impulse towards each other of two souls, a union in which there is neither conscious giving nor receiving.
In Sweden, I went to an English school, where there was a mishmash of people from all over the world. Some were diplomatic kids with a lot of money, some were ghetto kids who came up from the suburbs, and I grew up in between. There's a community of second generation immigrants, and I became part of that because I had an American father.