Welcome to Metro.co.uk‘s The Big Questions, where we ask, well, the big questions (and the smaller ones too), and this week, we’re diving deep with Busted.
The renowned noughties three-piece revealed today that they were reuniting for brand-new music and a significant UK arena trip (which is not yet on sale, however which we can relatively with confidence forecast will be a sold-out occasion).
Charlie Simpson, Matt Willis and James Bourne will be striking off for a 15-date trip in September, with the pledge to play all their greatest hits and fan-favourite tracks.
As well as this, the Air Hostess stars are re-recording a few of their leading tracks with a twist, signed up with on the tunes by other significant names consisting of the similarity McFly, Simple Plan and All Time Low.
Metro.co.uk took a seat with Charlie, James and Matt to discover why they believed Loser Kid – the very first revamped track to be launched on April 14th – was criminally underrated, the insanity of their increase to popularity, and why any Busted fan would be ‘an idiot’ to lose out on the upcoming trip.
Busted is back! What made you seem like now was the correct time?
M: Well it’s been twenty years. We’ve been discussing this for a while. We’ve been asked to do Greatest Hits trips and things in the past however it hasn’t felt right. But 20 years felt right.
C: 20 years felt good. And that we came up with the idea to re-record the old songs and get feature artists to do it with us. Artists we grew up with or were fans of or who were around the same time as us and we love. Simple Plan is the first one, All Time Low. Both of those bands are incredible We love them anyway.
J: We also feel like sometimes you don’t pick the time, the time chooses you. It was our 20th anniversary and we had been talking about doing it. It took a while for us to figure out the right way to do it.
M: For Busted to press the button and get doing stuff again, it’s always the catalyst for new music. There’s always a thing that makes us think, ‘Okay great, we’ve got something. Let’s go for it.’
C: Yeah, we’ll never do a tour just to tour.
M: Yeah, like Greatest Hits, there was nothing that exciting to us at the beginning. And then we came up with the idea of re-recording the old songs again featuring artists we loved. And that sounds f*****g exciting!
C: And it’s exciting for the fans. Every Tom Dick or Harry could go do a reunion tour. We want to make it cool.
How different are these reworked songs going to be? Are we going to get any screamo?
C: I do scream!
M: Charlie screams quite a lot on this.
J: Very, very loud.
M: I think the fans will like it. When you come watch us live, it’s been 20 years so we sound way better.
C: The producers did the original stuff and it was brilliant, it worked great back then. But 20 years on, the song is now completely – remember when Star Wars’ effects got redone? It’s not a better film but it was more awesome. It’s proper effects!
M: Some people will prefer the originals, and that’s fine. But I want to see the digitally enhanced one.
J: Those versions are still there, if you want to go listen to them. We’re not taking them away, I just think there is a nice feeling about delivering fresh recordings. Featuring these artists we never dreams we’d record with! To have Simple Plan on Loser Kid, and All Time Low on Air Hostess and all those amazing other people we have. It’s an amazing way to celebrate.
C: We’re not looking to do music videos, we’re going to do some sort of video. Maybe a lyric video, that conversation is being had. We’re not going to release all the songs before the tour, we’re looking at releasing maybe one a month until the tour and then the whole record will come out. And we’re going to be doing vinyl and a full bundle you’ll be able to get.
These songs were written 20 years ago and What I Go To School For has the teacher seeming ancient at 33 – will any of the lyrics change to reflect where you are now?
C: That is a good question. We haven’t made a decision on that yet.
M: We have a few options floating around. I remember when we wrote that song, we wrote that lyric specifically because we thought 33 was so old. Like, ‘The teacher is going to be 33, that is so old.’ Now I’ll be f****g 40 in a couple of weeks.
Busted became massive overnight. You were basically normal teenagers at the time, how did you handle the sudden fame?
C: I remember being quite shielded from all that stuff. I was 16 and I feel like it didn’t really affect me in that way. I think Matt and James were more susceptible to that because they were older, but even then we weren’t all about that.
M: Also we weren’t really accepted into that. I remember going on the Smash Hits tour and we were always the outsiders. We weren’t invited to Atomic Kitten’s f****g party. We weren’t in those gangs, we were in our own lane. That’s what Busted was – we weren’t in the pop world, we weren’t really in the rock world. We had our own little f*****g lane and that’s what made it so real.
C: We existed in our own space, that’s what it was.
What is your most memorable interaction with a fan from that time?
M: I remember Charlie getting sent a card. And inside of it was pubic hair.
C: It was sellotaped to the top and it said ‘Thinking of you’ or something.
M: No, ‘Just to be close to you,’ it said. I’ll never forget it. Like, wow, you shaved your pubes off and stuck them to a card.
C: I just don’t know what she thought I was going to do with it. Oh, yeah, I’ve found the one.
M: Oh, I’m going to marry that one!
What is it about Busted that sees the band have such a dedicated fanbase all these years later?
C: When we came out I think we were different to everything else that was there. I think a lot of fans latched onto what Busted was about. Guys with guitars playing fun music that kind of encapsulated what people loved about Blink 182 and that era of music. It was really fun, and pop music at the time was really tired. Everything felt the same – people sitting on stools and standing up to a key change. It was just pretty tired, it’d been going on for the last 10 years basically. I think we felt like a completely new thing. We took influence, obviously, from bands like Green Day and bands we grew up loving. But there were kids who hadn’t heard that type of music before and we were the introduction. And a lot of kids went on to become much heavier music fans. A lot of fans I meet are like, ‘Oh I ended up being a fan of like, Meshuggah but I started with Busted.’ It was like Busted was the weed, the gateway drug! I’m still shocked by it.
M: I meet people who are in really hardcore bands who are like, ‘I loved Busted!’ If we inspired them to do that, that’s f****g awesome.
Busted 20th Anniversary and Greatest Hits tour dates
September 2 – Plymouth, Pavilions
September 3 – Cardiff, International Arena
September 5 – Swansea, Arena
September 6 – Bournemouth, BIC
September 7 – Brighton, Centre
September 9 – Birmingham, Utilita Arena
September 10 – London, The O2
September 12 – Bridlington, Spa
September 15 – Nottingham, Motorpoint Arena
September 16 – Newcastle, Utilita Arena
September 17 – Leeds, First Direct Arena
September 19 – Aberdeen, P&J Live
September 20 – Glasgow, OVO Hydro
September 22 – Liverpool, M&S Bank Arena
September 24 – Manchester, AO Arena
J: I also feel like pop bands who were around in the general time we were around, there were a lot who were able to exist in that time who could get by by masking or covering up the parts of the band that weren’t genuine or real. Busted was authentic to the point that it’s grown with us because it came from us. A band like – I don’t want to single any bands out, I don’t want to be mean – but it’s a good time to revisit your band when the band is real and has got real songs. [The three of us] went into the studio and played our songs again and it wasn’t a big circus of needing to depend on a bunch of people. I can’t imagine S Club 7 coming into the studio and saying, ‘We’re going to re-record Don’t Stop Moving!’
A lot has changed since Busted first arrived on the scene – how do you think you would have fared starting off now with the likes of social media and being expected to have a presence?
C: I would have hated it. I would have hated it.
J: I don’t think it would have been good for us.
M: I don’t know – it’s what people have grown up with. We didn’t grow up with that so it doesn’t feel natural to us. But for kids these days it’s so normal to have that.
J: We’d have a lot more followers if we came out now!
C: But one thing that’s cool about today is that back then genres were boxed in very definitively. That’s one of the reasons why, even when I started Fightstar, at the very beginning it was like ‘You can’t do this if you’re not that.’ And now you’ve got Bring Me The Horizon doing trips with Ed Sheeran! That is cool. That is a real positive, that a lot of these barriers of genre-specific things have come down, and you’ve now got rap guys on pop-punk tracks. And that’s cool! Before you had to militantly belong to one or the other.
Even before social media there was plenty of gossip – do you remember any wild rumours about yourselves?
M: They were all kind of true about me.
J: I remember I once met Michael Jackson at his hotel at the Dorchester and there were all these stories in the paper about how I stayed the night. It was so stupid. I met him in the lobby of the hotel!
Is there a song from the Busted back catalogue you feel is underrated?
All: Yeah, Loser Kid!
M: It was my favourite song off that record. I loved it, and I still love it now. It’s a great f*****g song. It should have been the last single from that album. It’s such a f*****g banger and I think we’ve really done it justice [in the reworked album].
C: It’s actually a f*****g great tune.
J: We should have released it as a single after Sleeping With The Light On.
C: I also think a dark horse of a song that I think could do well on the radio now is When Day Turns Into Night. I can imagine that doing well now. It was way too weird to be a radio song back then. But now you can release songs that are ballads that might have a sort of strange arrangement. That’s a great song.
What is your favourite Busted song?
J: Sleeping With The Light On!
C: My favourite Busted song is 3am. Quite a few people’s is! I was talking to Rylan on Radio 2 a couple of weeks ago and his favourite was 3am. It’s the emo in it. The emo kids love it.
M: I really like Falling For You. I really love Falling For You, it’s a really f*****g great song to play.
You split in 2005 – did you ever think that almost 20 years later, Busted would be going on a massive arena tour?
M: When we split up I thought it was a definitive end, I really did. When we were talking to Charlie 10 years ago about coming back it kind of felt like it was going to happen. And I remember thinking, ‘F***.’ I thought maybe, there was a possibility, it might be amazing. But I never thought it would be a reality. But the lost sheep found his way home.
C: On that day in 2005 [when I left the band], I don’t think I would have thought we’d be here twenty years later. But the journey we’ve had has been so awesome. And once this is done I’m looking forward to doing more new stuff. We released an album, Night Driver, in 2016 which I f*****g love. That was an off the kerb record. What’s cool about Busted is, as James said, we’re creative people. We love coming together and playing these sorts of shows and sharing it with the fans. But we also love making music. We are musicians at the end of the day. What’s going to be fun about this tour in particular is that this is a throwback and this is celebrating all the hits. People are going to come and experience what they loved about the band in the first place. We haven’t really done that! [McFly tour] was almost a concept tour, which was really cool. But this is going to be – any Busted fan would be an idiot to miss this.
M: Everything you love about Busted will be there. And we will be celebrating it. And because it’s a big tour, we’re throwing everything out there. We’re going to make the biggest f*****g noise we possibly can.
J: It’s going to be the best show we’ve ever done.
Tickets for Busted’s tour go on general sale on March 31, with presale beginning March 29.
What does Busted’s weekend look like?
What does your typical Saturday look like when you’re all together?
M: We’ve just been in LA together recording, so I would meet these guys, they’d pick me up and we’d drive to the studio and we’d record all day – so that was our day!
And how has your weekends changed from back in the day?
M: Back in the day I’d have to wake up early and wake James up. James would pretend to be awake and then get into bed and I’d have to come in again. Once I went in the door and saw James in bed and said ‘You’ve got to get up!’ And he said okay, and I saw him put his legs on the floor and tap them as though he was walking. Pretending he was walking around! And then got back into bed. I was like ‘James, I just watched you do that. Get up!’
J: He was always responsible with getting out of bed. I was terrible at that, I hated that. Now I’m better, it’s come with time.
What TV shows do you find yourselves bingeing on the weekend?
J: White Lotus! I watched the whole thing on the plane.
C: Season three is the best.
J: I didn’t even know there was a season three!
C: There isn’t. Season two is the best.
M: Don’t play with my emotions like that!
C: I’ve started watching The Bear. It’s got 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, very rare.
M: Me and my kids are rewatching Family Guy. It’s very inappropriate for children but they somehow love it. I’m okay with it.
What would be your go-to brunch order?
C: I would go for poached eggs on a muffin maybe. A bit of bacon. No hollandaise though. Like eggs benedict with no hollandaise. And some freshly squeezed juice, possibly of the orange variety.
J: Poached eggs on a muffin?! Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, THE MUFFIN MAN?
M: I love… I’m going to say it wrong. Is it shakshouka? I love that. It’s so good.
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