“Do you know what?” Matt Willis asks, turning around to his bandmates at a Swansea hotel. “This is f*cking brilliant right now. It feels really good in Busted. Is that just me?!”
The answer is unanimous: no, it’s not only Matt who’s enjoying all things Busted. Neither are the good vibes reserved just for his two pals Charlie Simpson and James Bourne, either. Currently on the road enjoying a sold-out 26-date run (the biggest UK arena tour of 2023, they’ll announce onstage in London a few days later), there are quite literally thousands of people totally wrapped up in Busted fever at the moment, as the pop-rock trio celebrate 20 years since their first two albums: 2002’s Busted and 2003’s A Present For Everyone.
“The thing that’s weird, actually, is it’s more than the last 20 years – the way that it’s positioned right now and the way that it feels at the shows, it feels like we’re on the precipice of something really big,” grins James. “You have to come to understand. I can’t really explain it, but there’s a vibe…”
“It feels amazing,” agrees Charlie. “The stars have aligned, and everything’s just really cool. When Busted came out, we were lucky enough to find our way in people’s lives at a point in their lives that’s really stayed with them. Twenty years have gone by, and some bands are really scared of doing things that are nostalgia-driven, but I think it’s awesome; nostalgia is a very powerful emotion, and I love listening to all that throwback stuff. We just did a Spotify playlist and I put in Fenix TX, Matt put Finch in… it just takes you back. I can see what I was doing at 15 years old at that moment, and it brings back so many memories. What an awesome thing that is.”
And not only is this milestone being appreciated all across the country in-person between band and fans, but there’s also an equally impressive audio feast coming, too: Greatest Hits 2.0, a double album of re-recorded Busted classics, and a star-studded compilation featuring everyone from Dashboard Confessional and Simple Plan to Neck Deep and Charlotte Sands.
Here, Matt, James and Charlie talk us through Greatest Hits 2.0 and inspiring today’s pop-punk bands, hoping to work with Bring Me The Horizon one day, and growing up wanting to be blink-182…
The three of you have been doing your own thing for the past few years, but did you have the 20th anniversary of Busted earmarked, and whose idea was it to go, ‘Okay, we’re gonna come together and do a massive arena tour and a greatest hits album’?
Charlie: “We were aware that the anniversary was coming up and that we’d never done a greatest hits, so those two things were always floating in the background. But I think Matt was the first person to suggest doing the greatest hits with other artists, which I thought was really interesting. With the playlist generation you can make your own greatest hits, so it’s a bit pointless, so we definitely wanted to re-record the songs, and then it just snowballed into this crazy thing where we also ended up working with 15 artists.”
Matt: “Which was a logistical nightmare!”
Charlie: “We have personal connections with a lot of the artists, but to go through everything and get it all over the line was a really tough thing. But we got there in the end, and it’s amazing.”
Matt: “I’ve never really been excited about any band doing a greatest hits, because it just feels like you’re selling the same old sh*t again. I like the idea of going to watch a band play their greatest hits, but the idea of just releasing a greatest hits album didn’t excite us. But going into the studio again, and re-recording the songs as we play them now, that felt f*cking exciting, and something that we really wanted to do. And getting different people to feature on them just sounded really fun, and we wanted to work with all these people and we were stoked they said yes. It’s been a really cool experience.”
How did it work – did you get in the studio with anyone, or was it all done remotely?
Charlie: “We made this record in LA, and Ben from Neck Deep was in LA recording but we had just flown home, so he went into the studio a couple of days later and did his vocals. But all of the other ones were just done remotely and sent to us, because we really wanted the artists to have a sense of putting their own stamp on what they were doing – and if we were there breathing down their neck, I didn’t think that would be as cool. We encouraged them to do stuff if they had extra ideas. Both All Time Low and You Me At Six added additional vocal parts that weren’t in the originals, and I actually think make the songs better.”
Matt: “And Bowling For Soup, as well. Jaret [Reddick] has gone to town, and it’s so f*cking fun – it’s so awesome.”
James: “Jaret really came through.”
Matt: “We had a WhatsApp group with Jaret and he sent the vocals over and we hadn’t listened for a couple of days because we were so in the middle of getting everything ready, and we got a message from him going, ‘Hey guys… is everything okay? Did I do too much?!’ Because he really does some funny stuff, so maybe he thought, ‘Oh no, they hate it!’ But we were like, ‘Dude, we just haven’t listened to it!’ So then we did and were like, ‘f*cking hell, this is so good.’ So he was a bit worried, but what he did was so awesome.”
Charlie: “And Wheatus, who suit the song really well. Brendan [B. Brown] has got such a unique voice, and it sounded really good. And Dashboard Confessional! We were really excited about that one because we don’t really have a connection to [Chris Carrabba] – it was just like, ‘Send it to him and see what he says.’ We’re the biggest Dashboard fans, and we were so excited about that one.”
Matt: “And now it’s changed the way I sing the song, because he sung it so f*cking well. He did this melody change that’s so cool and now I’ve stolen it – although I’m not quite as whispery as him (laughs).”
Did you have more of a potentially far-fetched wishlist, too? Charlie, you’re a very big Deftones fan…
Charlie: “I would have urinated in my pants if Chino [Moreno] had done it! I think doing something with Oli Sykes would be really fun, because that’s really off the wall and I know the Bring Me [The Horizon] boys.”
Matt: “That’s for the 30-year anniversary!”
Charlie: “We wanted to keep it genre-specific and make it a pop-punk thing.”
James: “We actually wanted New Found Glory.”
Charlie: “Yeah, that would have been cool. We’ve got Neck Deep who are new-school, flying the flag, and then you’ve got stuff like Bowling For Soup and Simple Plan. And it’s interesting how many of these bands were actually fans of us – Ben from Neck Deep said one of his favourite songs growing up was Meet You There, and that’s the song that he sings on. And I didn’t realise Alex [Gaskarth] from All Time Low grew up in England, so he was very aware of the band. It was really cool.”
Given that you’ve done all these collabs and you’re in the midst of a huge sell-out tour, do you feel more accepted and appreciated within the rock and pop-punk world in 2023?
James: “There are definitely people that accept us now that didn’t in the beginning. But I always felt the band was very popular in 2002, but it was just a specific audience. Whereas now, when you look out, it’s everybody. There’s not just one demographic.”
Charlie: “The industry has changed so much that it would have been unfathomable that we’d been in Kerrang! 20 years ago. But now everything has changed for the better, and lines have been blurred. When I left Busted to do Fightstar, Kerrang! were a huge supporter of Fightstar and I’m so thankful for that, but those divisions [in the industry] were really difficult. I think if that same thing happened again, it just wouldn’t be like that. Things have changed in a really positive way, and I think it’s partly because these barriers of tribalism between genres have come down, and it’s allowed people to like different types of music. I think someone could wear an *NSYNC T-shirt now to Download and no-one would give them any sh*t.”
Matt: “I remember seeing Charlie on the front cover of Kerrang! after he left Busted and thinking, ‘That’s f*cking awesome.’”
Charlie: “I’ve still got it in my studio!”
Matt: “I saw it in the f*cking shop and was like, ‘No-one will realise how much that means to Charlie.’ We read Kerrang! every week, always read it in the bus on tour, we all loved it and loved those bands – and we were influenced by all those bands. It really formed who Busted was. And now the new bands who are coming out have been quite vocal about how influenced they were by Busted.”
Charlie: “I think that’s the key. It’s been 20 years, and you had little Ben from Neck Deep in the crowd, growing up to be Ben from Neck Deep.”
James: “Busted was what Busted was: it’s guitar music, and playing songs that came from us, and in a way it really wasn’t that different from the other stuff. I think there was a marketing façade, and a lot of people can’t see past that when they’ve got their music industry cap on. But a 10-year-old coming to see us at Wembley couldn’t care less, and then becomes Ben from Neck Deep, basically! It’s really interesting.”
Matt: “And we see them in the crowd – it’s so diverse now. I had this big bearded guy with neck tatts screaming at me, ‘I love you, Matt!’ I was like, ‘I didn’t have that 20 years ago!’ It’s f*cking rad. Back in the day I could spot a Busted fan walking down the street a mile off – and I knew to cross the road (laughs) – but now it feels like we’ve got a little bit of everyone in there. It’s open for everyone.”
Charlie: “When we came out, there wasn’t really a space for that – we sort of existed in our own thing, because it wasn’t really pop, it wasn’t overtly rock. I guess that’s what made us unique when we came out, which is great.”
Matt: “And I don’t think we appreciated that at the time. When I think back to the end of Busted, we so wanted to get out of this world that had been created for us, in a way. We were like, ‘We’re not what you think we are.’ We wanted to fight against that. It’s benefitted us in the long run now, but we did really struggle with this world that we were placed in, that we never really intended to be in. When we started the band, we thought we were gonna be f*cking blink-182! We thought we’d be in that world, and all of a sudden we realised very quickly that we weren’t in that world. It was like, ‘This isn’t really what we ever intended to be…’ And so in some ways we couldn’t fully appreciate it at the time, because we weren’t sure if it was right. But we loved the music; we didn’t take ourselves too seriously, but we took the music very seriously. And when other people couldn’t, we found that very difficult. But time is a f*cking amazing thing, because now we can look back and go, ‘That was awesome!’”
What are you most proud about with these two albums?
Charlie: “I’m actually really proud that we have bands that we love, who wanted to come and contribute. The idea that we had a part to play in the formation of some of these bands’ music is really humbling, and really awesome.”
Matt: “When I think back to the old songs, I still love them and they’re a representation of what we were then. But this is a true representation of what the band is right now. I feel like I could put this on anywhere and someone would get something from it. And now it’s about, ‘Well, what do we do now?’ And that’s the most exciting thing. There’s something about f*cking selling out 26 arenas that just gives you this sense of confidence (laughs), and really f*cking makes you go, ‘Okay, people give a f*ck, so let’s do some really cool sh*t.’ And that’s where we are right now; we’re thinking about the next record and where we’re gonna take Busted in the future, and that’s really exciting.”
