Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
It isn’t abnormal for an artist to undergo a fresh identity as a brand new album cycle brews. Many bands clear out their social media, introduce new colorways, and start worldbuilding to mirror the concepts featured in their upcoming record. In recent years as artists try to tackle the beast that is the ever evolving digital media landscape, it’s become a trend to make each new project its own era… which has seen both notable and mediocre attempts. Yet, as 2025 hits its last strides, it doesn’t seem like anyone in the mainstream music sphere has executed this brand overhaul as seamlessly as 5 Seconds of Summer has with their sixth record Everyone’s A Star!
This time around, the Australian pop-rock group dives head first into a character study on the boyband model (a label they’ve tried to bob and weave between since first opening up for One Direction in 2013), dressing up as a hybrid between hyper-caricatured versions of themselves and the illustrious boybands of the ‘90s and 2010s, using sensational headlines, and evoking a sense of alien syndrome. If you’ve followed 5 Seconds of Summer for any length of time, it’s well-known how hard they’ve tried to push against this bubblegum image, falling into a dogfight of musical integrity as they’ve bounced between the grey areas of rock and punk and pop across their past five albums with varying levels of success. Everyone’s a Star!, though, finds the group taking advantage of the perceptual blindness that was bound to them since they first broke onto the scene as teenagers, touching on their clumsy merit and vices under the magnifying glass of the public eye. They crank the stereotype up to an eleven, delivering a high-octane, experimental pop outing that unapologetically marries ‘80s new wave, dark-rock, and ‘90s house music which could surprisingly see the band taking the title of best mainstream pop album of the year—and I don’t say that lightly.
From the title-track opener, there’s an obvious departure from 2022’s 5SOS5, which saw the group dabbling with the same glossy rock and pop-punk elements they’d been working around for years. The first four tracks, here, white-knuckle through hyperpop soundscapes, funky retro dance production, and biting lyricism. Lyrics like “Everything is better when I don’t know what it means / Eating gum for dinner and I’m smiling through my teeth” on “Everyone’s a Star!” and “boy in a boyband, imaginary boyfriend/ irritates the metalheads, it’s your favorite boyband” on the darkly-lit “Boyband” critique the parasocial zeitgeist and trappings of fame they’ve felt as puppets to an industry that always wants an encore.
After setting the stage, the record dips into more personal, introspective territories as “No 1. Obsession” creeps in with a gritty-rock feel that soaks up all the heavy fixation that comes with desperately wanting someone to want you back and two slick, alt-pop tunes (“I’m Scared I’ll Never Sleep Again” and “istillfeelthesame”) that touch on longing and regret that seem ripped straight from the tape-deck of a night-drive in a soft-grained ‘80s film. Think The 1975’s first couple records, very Flock of Seagulls and hazy Depeche Mode.
In later tracks, we start to hear blips of past 5 Seconds of Summer, tracks like “The Rocks” and “Sick of Myself” encapsulating that pop-punk spunk they’ve come to perfect. But the personal standout is in the band’s interest in spoken-word vocals throughout the record. Akin to Men at Work or Gorillaz, a few songs on Everyone’s a Star! centralize this style which they virtually pull off for a technique that is foreign territory for the group. Nowhere is it done better, though, than on the indie-sleaze romp “Evolve.” Featuring both the confessional feel and the pressures of the pop industry bubble, there’s not another song on the album that seamlessly blends the two themes of the project more than this one. It chronicles the baggage of one’s peter pan syndrome (“You keep on sayin’ that I got to get my soul right / you wanna hold me, but I gotta get a grip” and “I know you can make me a man from a monkey”) while battling the connections to cheap thrills and vanity that fame consistently feeds (“But I wanna have fun, I wanna get high, I wanna get drunk / I wanna do drugs, I wanna make love, I wanna get fucked” and “Get a pink limousine, creme de la creme, you know what I mean?”). It’s a really fun one to ride through.
5 Seconds of Summer’s Everyone’s a Star! is a tongue-in-cheek survey of fame and a masterful step in the band’s sonic repertoire. Their ability to perform this strongly with this level of experimental pop six albums in is impressive to hear. Thank God mainstream music has a group like them operating in a space that has been overrun with many lazy, generic folk adjacent projects the past couple years. Very few big artists are doing it as unapologetically balls-to-the-wall like 5 Seconds of Summer is right now. If anything, this album should teach others to stop being afraid of making pop music pop and making rock music rock. Just do it, and turn it up to an eleven when you do. It feels so much less phony, and maybe next year we won’t have to wait until the middle of November to crown our pop record of the year.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
Everyone’s a Star! is out now.
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Hope Ankney | @heart_vandelay
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