Simple Plan Went Down Some Difficult Paths

There came a point in Simple Plan’s career where they felt like, just maybe, abandoning their pop-punk roots would be a cool idea. The year was 2016, and you’ll be forgiven if you don’t remember the ensuing lead single “I Don’t Wanna Go to Bed” — they traded in their previous, spiky hits like “I’m Just a Kid” and “Welcome to My Life” for an attempt at their own “Uptown Funk.” In fact, front man Pierre Bouvier wouldn’t mind wiping it clean from your memory. “It wasn’t a song meant for us to do, and we lacked the clarity to understand that,” he now recalls. “If it was in the right context with the right artists, I truly believe this could have been a worldwide smash hit. But nobody wants to hear Simple Plan go, ‘I don’t want to go to bed, I don’t want to go,’ while Nelly raps in the background.” It was a far cry from their nostalgic image as the earnest Canadian princes of pop-punk, which Bouvier and the band have course-corrected to embrace ever since.

This has recently included their 2022 album Harder Than It Looks — which Bouvier describes as a “mature and raw reflection of what we were going through” as the band members approached their 40s — as well as a frequent touring schedule that will keep them on the road until November. Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd, a documentary commentating their silver anniversary, was also released on July 8. Through it all, one mandate has remained in the studio: “We wanted to tell people there was hope.”

The Song

Everybody in the pop-punk scene at the time wanted to sound like Enema of the State, by Blink-182. That album flipped the scene on its head because they had an attitude, but the music was almost nursery-rhyme-ish. They were a huge influence on who Simple Plan was. It was so refreshing to hear well-crafted pop songs with distorted guitars and that snark and irreverent-adolescent vibe. Our style was basically a mix of Green Day and Blink-182. We had the big old baggy Dickies, spiked bracelets, spiked hair, and the mischievous attitudes of doing stupid shit. It wasn’t something that was manufactured by the label; that was just who we were. I wanted to wear Billabong, Hurley, and all this stuff that Blink-182 was wearing, because we felt, Those guys were awesome, so let’s just do that.

We felt like using deeper and sadder lyrics would work really well with melodies that are uplifting. It would make it so that it wouldn’t seem so depressing. Yeah, life is difficult, but the joyfulness of the song is what makes you feel, Oh, but it’s going to be okay as long as we all have each other and we can all relate to each other. When you’re in those moments, sometimes it feels good to say, “This sucks, this is so terrible.” But we all overcome these things. Whenever I get lost in sadness and depression, the one thing that brings me back is knowing I’m not the only person going through it. Everybody has some shit to go through. If you feel like you’re alone, you’re not really alone. That was the concept behind “I’m Just a Kid.”

The Bet

There’s so many horror stories of people being signed to major labels, losing control, and being taken advantage of. Our experience was different. The label was always open to what we wanted to do, and they made us feel like we had a better radar on where to take the band. We always felt like we had agency in our careers. We all agreed “I’m Just a Kid” was the most instantaneous song. You’re going to walk away remembering the lyrics. It’s extremely catchy and simple to grasp — no pun intended. If you put on a song like “I’d Do Anything” or “Addicted,” the hook comes in a little bit later. “I’m Just a Kid” reels you in the fastest.

The Payoff

It became a hit in several countries, but in America it didn’t do well at all. It didn’t chart on radio. In Canada, Japan, and other places, it really did blow up. So it was a disappointment in some ways, but at the same time, we had no success whatsoever before this, so any success at all was going to be nice. It put us on the map but didn’t quite take us the whole way we wanted to go.

The Song

We were writing on the high of the success of the first record. The industry that thought pop-punk was dying was wrong. Chuck Comeau came to me and said, “I got this idea for a song called ‘Welcome to My Life.’ It would be cool if we had a song filled with a lot of universal questions.” Do you ever feel like breaking down? Do you ever feel out of place? Well, welcome to my life. We all agreed that this was Simple Plan 2.0. We felt a responsibility to our fans to continue to write about struggle. “Welcome to My Life” is a more mature version of “Perfect” or “I’m Just a Kid” — it felt like this is what we still needed to be doing.

The Bet

I remember when the song was done, I was driving around in my car in Vancouver and thought, Damn, this is going to be a hit. We sent it to our manager. His reply was, “Yeah, it’s a good song. I like it.” And we’re like, “That’s it? It’s not just good, this is the best song we’ve ever had.” We started convincing everybody else to feel that this song could have a lot more than they initially thought. We might have considered “Shut Up!” first because we wanted to hit it with some punch, but we knew “Welcome to My Life” was going to be the one we would put all the power behind and really push it.

The Payoff

We got a phone call from our label that was like, “Guys, it’s crushing it. We sold this many units.” It was very hard to comprehend the opportunity and success it was. We were on MTV all the time and became staples of the network. It didn’t register how unlikely a band like us would have not one multiplatinum album, but two albums in a row. We opened up to touring the world. We really started to hit Europe harder. We started to do Australia and all over Asia, which established an incredible fan base for us for the rest of our career. We had all the late-night shows begging us to come on. It was a whirlwind of touring, go there, do this, do that. I don’t think I registered it well. It was a matter of lack of maturity from my end and just being a guy in his mid-20s enjoying the moment, partying, drinking, and having fun.

The Song

It was a very confusing time for the band. After two albums of being successful, it felt like radio and television declared pop-punk as dead. It’s Justin Timberlake and Timbaland now — stuff that’s way more R&B and hip-hop-oriented. People didn’t want to hear stuff with guitars. We had success on pop radio but little success on rock radio. You get that weird feeling where you’re like, Are we going to keep doing the same thing over and over again, or are we going to prove to the world we can do more? Which is so silly. But we felt like we needed to show there’s more to Simple Plan and write a song that will do well on radio. It took us two years to arrive at “When I’m Gone.” It cost a fortune to make the record. We felt like we wanted to be part of that “new sound” mix. We did a session with Max Martin in Sweden, and all “When I’m Gone” boiled down to was, “You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.” It was such a basic, moderate idea.

The Bet

Was that the right choice? I’m not sure. But it did feel like we needed to do something different, marry the genre of what’s on pop radio right now, and kick it in with big choruses.

The Payoff

I don’t know why we had this desire to feel like we had to shake things up. It was kind of a flop as far as our fan reaction. There was no opportunity for songs like that to be played on radio, anyway, so it didn’t do super well. But in hindsight, it did serve a purpose. It allowed us to venture out so far that it made us want to come back for the next record and be like, Okay, let’s just be Simple Plan again.

The Song

Because of the setup that the third album did for us, it felt like we had gone so far off the path of what people thought Simple Plan was. We had to course-correct and be like, “Okay, let’s not overthink it, just be the band we wanted to be back when we were teenagers.” So we went back to the basics. We got Rivers Cuomo from Weezer to come out and write this song. We had a house we were renting in Los Angeles for a couple of months and we invited him to come join us. Because we’re Canadian, we’re such people pleasers. The day before he showed up, we got together and came up with a bunch of ideas that we thought would sound cool for Weezer. Even though we knew it was for us, we somehow wanted to write a song that Rivers would come in think was cool.

We had the general concept before he came in, and sure enough, Rivers was like, “This is great.” Then by the end of it — we wrote the song in one day with him — he was like, “Hey, guys, by the way, if you don’t end up using this song, I would use it for Weezer.” We told him, “That is the biggest compliment we could ever receive.” So we asked him if he would sing on it and he was like, “Absolutely.” So that single was a desire for us to shed all of the backlash from our third record for being like, “What are they doing?” We had to show people we could be the Simple Plan that was more resembling the first and second album.

The Bet

We recorded “Jet Lag” at the same time. We knew those were going to be the first two singles, but we chose “Can’t Keep My Hands Off You” to have that pop-punk energy back. Since we did something that was so catered to radio last time, we wanted to show that this wasn’t meant to be a radio single. It’s meant to be a single for the hard-core fans. We’re not trying to be something that we’re not. We’re just being ourselves.

The Payoff

The reception across the board from our fan base was 100 percent great, which was the whole point of the song. At that point, strangely enough, we felt like the massive success of the first two albums covered up the fact that the third album was a commercial disappointment. We were playing festivals and playing our own headline shows. The band was still very big, but we had given up on the prospects of being a radio pop band. It was like, You know what? They don’t want to play that stuff anyway, so screw that and let’s just do what we do.

The Song

For Simple Plan to go out with a song like this, in hindsight, was a bad idea. It was written as an accident. I was at my house and had this idea on the piano. I had two young kids at the time and they would often complain, “I don’t want to go to bed.” I was like, Oh, it’s such a funny lyric. I got some jazzy chords that turned into, “I don’t wanna go to bed without you.” I thought, I don’t know who should be playing this song, but this sounds like a hit. It sounds like a Motown song. Chasing it made sense. But once it was done, we were a little confused as to what to do with it. It was fucking fire, but it didn’t sound like Simple Plan. So we figured, Hey, let’s swing for the fences and see what happens. It was a totally wrong move.

We did a writing session with Tim Pagnotta from Sugarcult and played him the song. His answer, which we should have listened to, was, “Just because you can do something and you’re able to do it, doesn’t mean that you should.” I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of a weird response.” And later I was like, “Oh, shit. Yeah, I get it now.” This is a controversial statement, because people like to believe that when you’re an artist, you can allow yourself to do whatever comes to your mind, you should never stop yourself, and it doesn’t matter what your fans want. I don’t agree with that statement. I don’t want to hear that song by Simple Plan. I want to hear that song by Maroon 5.

The Bet

We felt the formula of having another artist on a song would convince people to play it on the radio. Nelly came into the studio and wrote his verse on the spot. He had a big posse of people. He smoked so much weed. And then we never saw him again.

The Payoff

I don’t regret it. It taught me many lessons that I’ll never do again. I’m also proud of the fact we pulled off a song that if you didn’t know who Simple Plan was and played this song, you might be like, “Yeah, it’s not for me, but it’s good.” I thoroughly believe it’s a well-crafted song, but it wasn’t a wise move to put it out as Simple Plan commercially.

The Song

Fans have told us they were contemplating suicide and they’re still alive because they put our records on. It seems almost unreal to think that can be the power of music. We felt a big responsibility to be there for our fans and how our music has changed their lives. So we wanted to write about the relationship between the band and them, but didn’t want to write it so on the nose — more like it was wide enough that it could be a story about a relationship being an antidote. But we knew there was a wink to our super-hard-core fans who feel like Simple Plan is their antidote.

When we recorded “The Antidote,” I was in my early 40s. You have this idea when you’re younger that adults don’t understand you and it’s so hard to grow up. And then you grow up and you realize, “Oh my God, the kids had it easy.” There’s so many more responsibilities and feelings of guilt. Especially when you become a parent, you think, I’m not good enough and I’m not doing enough. It’s wild how songs like “I’m Just a Kid” and “Perfect” apply to me more today than they did back when I was 20 years old.

The Bet

The subject matter was a big deal for us to go as a first single. We felt like our fans were going to love this, and that’s all that matters most. Also, we were seeing more rock on the radio. Pop-punk and guitars were back. So it felt like this could be a song to fit in there.

The Payoff

There are two metrics we will continue to go on. First is fan satisfaction. Yes, we look at the comments. You put a song out and within 30 minutes, you have a sample of what thousands of people think. We can right now go and play for thousands of people without current virality. When we put this song out, we had a gamble of, “It might chart or create a ripple effect that goes beyond our fan base.” That’s the extra stuff we don’t necessarily need, but of course we always crave. You’re only one more hit away from revolutionizing your entire career — changing everything with one song. When “The Antidote” came out, our fans loved it. It didn’t get on the radio. Okay, well, whatever. We’ll try the next one. That’s our philosophy now for everything.