On 5 Seconds of Summer, “Old Me,” and the Consistency of Fandom

Growing up as a pop music fan, I didn’t entirely grasp the concept of having an artist that felt like they were yours. All of the artists that I loved––Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Jesse McCartney at the time––were in such astronomical places in music. This was also during the early 2000s, eons before the inception of social media, so my only contact with my favorite musicians came via magazine interviews and episodes of Total Request Live. They felt far away, but I didn’t recognize it at the time because I thought that’s how every artist felt to everyone.

I felt a spark of something deeper when I became a fan of One Direction in 2012. I made some of my closest friends in the world through the 1D fan account that I had on Twitter for 6 years. To be fair, I never technically stopped having that account, I just changed my username to look more “professional.” But even that spark didn’t last long because I came to love them when the world came to love them. Within months, they were the biggest band on the planet and they felt far away, too. A few years later, they announced their “18-month hiatus” that is now in its fourth year.

Those years that I spent live tweeting the band’s award show appearances and defending them through everything hold some of the fondest memories of my teenage years. I still think they were one of the most consistently great pop acts of the 2010s, and I still think they deserve more recognition for that. But listening to their music now is a bittersweet reminder of the fact that I never got to see them live before they abandoned me and that those simplistic teenage years as a boy band fan are just history now. Aside from the memories and the music, I think the greatest gift One Direction may have given me is my favorite band, which is coincidentally not them.

In early 2013, One Direction announced that they’d be taking an Australian band called 5 Seconds of Summer on tour with them. At the time, Luke Hemmings (lead vocalist, guitarist), Michael Clifford (guitarist), Calum Hood (bassist), and Ashton Irwin (drummer) had only been together for just over a year, with only their 2012 EP Somewhere New and a few scattered tracks and covers in their discography. The first song of theirs that I heard was “Gotta Get Out.”

In three minutes and forty-three seconds, I got a glimpse of something so much bigger, both conceptually and musically, than the manufactured pop music I had grown up on. Everything from the lyrics to the way the guitars, bass, and drums fit together held this feeling of intention, like they actually cared about the music.

From the beginning, nothing about 5SOS felt forced, and it made me excited for them. I remember, too vividly, the day that the band came to the U.S. for the first time for the One Direction tour. They were in Miami and couldn’t believe how big the drink sizes were here. I remember the day the video for their 2013 single “Try Hard” was released, and the day my mom refused to let me use her debit card to buy a $15 ticket to their show in the Studio at Webster Hall that summer. The first time I’d heard “Amnesia” wasn’t on their 2014 debut album, but in a YouTube video from a show in Glasgow where they premiered the song––I still have the audio from that version in my iTunes library. I still get annoyed when the girl who recorded it screams during the second verse.

Most of my favorite pieces of 5SOS’ music are the ones that aren’t available on Spotify or Apple Music. I like the less polished original recordings of “Heartbreak Girl” and “Out of My Limit” that were re-recorded for their debut album. I’ve kept Luke’s cover of Ed Sheeran’s “Lego House” from an acoustic session at an Australian radio station on repeat for hours at a time, comforted by the sound of his voice. All of these moments feel more personal and intimate to me, recalling a time when they were my best kept secret.

At 21, these memories are what came flooding back into my mind while watching the music video for 5SOS’ single “Old Me” from their recently released fourth studio album, CALM. For the video, they recruited four boys to portray much younger, and much smaller versions of themselves. The younger boys wore replicas of the outfits worn on the Somewhere New EP cover as they recreated moments from the band’s past, hanging out and practicing their craft. The easter eggs throughout the video make nods to One Direction and the “Amnesia” music video, bringing the 7 years in-between then and now full circle.

So much has changed since then. Luke is 23 now, and his closet has expanded beyond the one Nirvana tee and the ‘You Complete Me(ss)’ shirt that I’m certain 1 in every 3 veteran 5SOS fans tried to buy in 2013 and/or currently have hanging in their closet. He swapped out his classic black vans and lip ring for heeled boots and chains around his neck. Michael, 24, took out his eyebrow piercing and got engaged. Calum, also 24, is still deeply mysterious and intimidating, but now he’s also a dog dad with a buzz cut. Ashton is 25 and has grown immensely in his craft. I become more and more enamored with the way his brain thinks about music with each musical tangent he goes on in interviews.

I’ve changed a lot, too. When 5SOS entered my life, I was a freshman in high school. I don’t remember if I gravitated towards their music because I was already filled to the brim with teenage angst, or if the Green Day and All Time Low-inspired energy that it exuded at the time was the actual source of that “I hate this town!” feeling. Whenever I would hear Calum sing “She took a chance and packed her bags, she left town and didn’t look back” on “Social Casualty,” I couldn’t help but imagine what my life would be like if I were anywhere else.

Maybe I was carving a personality out of the music I listened to. Regardless, I was going through what every other 14 year old was going through. As far as I was concerned, I was the main character in a coming of age teen film who genuinely believed that it was me against the world. I was attempting to figure out who I was, whatever that means, and trying to balance that identity against who I thought the people I encountered wanted me to be. It’s a confusing age. From there, everything starts to move really fast and it doesn’t ever truly slow down.

Over that seven-year period, a lot of things that I thought would be permanent proved not to be. One Direction broke up. I lost friends, and gained friends, and lost the friends I gained. I was diagnosed with an anxiety condition that explained why I felt so much more comfortable making friends on Twitter than at school. I developed a stress-related eating disorder without realizing it. These were issues too big for music to act as a bandage for, but both the music and the world around it were things that I could get lost in as a distraction, even if only for a little while.

Whenever I would watch the videos 5SOS uploaded to Twitter joking around in their dressing room before a show or riding around in Wal-Mart on mobile scooters, it felt as though I was filling a void. Everything was changing in my day-to-day life, but I found consistency and support in 5SOS.

Growing up with them, the passage of milestones in my own life coincided with theirs. They were there through me getting my first job so that I could afford tickets to their tour, learning more about my own interests and what I want to do in life, and my transition to adulthood. I was there through the band’s first, second, and third albums debuting at number one on the Billboard album charts, through their growth as songwriters and artists, and through all two dozen times that Michael dyed his hair some unnatural color. I was also there when things started to go wrong.

When 5SOS were featured on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2015, it was the first time that I felt like I had lost them. Explaining what it was like to be a 5SOS fan at that time to someone who didn’t experience it first hand is dramatic and just, embarrassing. The interview was full of quotes about all of the girls they’d hooked up with, their reliance on alcohol and party culture, and featured a cameo from Luke’s then-girlfriend about being a trust fund internet influencer. Really devastating stuff for a 17 year old whose favorite member was the one with the trust fund influencer girlfriend.

Feeling embarrassed by association, I took off the 5SOS wristband that I’d worn every day without fail since seeing them live for the first time. I can’t believe I’m exposing myself like this. I felt like I didn’t know who they were anymore. They weren’t posting the same lighthearted videos that I’d return to whenever I was having a bad day and needed to laugh. I still listened to the music because it was comforting more than anything. I couldn’t listen to “Close as Strangers” for a while. The lyric “Six weeks since I’ve been away / And now you’re sayin’ everything has changed / And I’m afraid that I might be losing you” was a little too on the nose.

Other songs like “Long Way Home” and “Lost Boy” felt familiar and I’d listen to them on repeat for hours recounting the memories that they sound tracked. More than anything, though, I missed my band and I hated how far away they felt.

Looking back, the article was written with the hope of delivering a shock factor to the band’s predominately female fan base, something I’ve learned that the journalist who wrote it does quite often to artists with similar fan bases. 5SOS went away for almost two years after that, going through their own minor-scale scandals and multiple lineup changes in their friend group. When they came back, I was a sophomore in college. They were more mature and ready to pour their heart and soul into their music again. I remember reading interviews about everything they had learned in their time off and what was going to be different this time around. It felt like I had finally reconciled a falling out with my best friends.

Following 5SOS’ career has been the first time that I’ve had the chance to grow up with an artist, and it wasn’t until recently––around the start of the Youngblood era in 2018––that I came to understand what that means. I’m not one for giving unconditional support to anyone, but I do believe in being there for the people who are there for you, through the good and the bad.

The feeling that I got from 5SOS’ music the first time I heard it has been in every song of theirs that I’ve heard since. The pounding in my chest that appeared right before they stepped on stage in Virginia Beach on their Rock Out With Your Socks Out tour in 2015 has returned at every 5SOS show I’ve been to since. There’s a lyric in “Disconnected,” one of the band’s deep cuts that they don’t play live anymore, that goes: “You are my getaway / You are my favorite place,” and it’s always the first thing to pop into my mind as soon as they step off stage for the night.

This band feels like family to me at this point, in the same way that the friends that I’ve made through them do. Because of that, I feel like I owe it to them to continue to show up. I owe it to them to approach each new album through the lens of how they’ve grown since the last one and be proud that they’re still growing; And, I owe it to myself to still be as excited about the music as I was at fourteen and to continue going to as many 5SOS shows as I can because I know how cathartically happy they make me.

The 5SOS delivering the lyrics “Shout out to the old me and everything you showed me / Had to f*ck it up before I let you get to know me” on “Old Me” are lightyears away from the 5SOS singing about falling skies and tumbling skyscrapers on “Gotta Get Out.” They’ve grown as people and, by extension, as musicians, experiencing life and distilling that into the greatest songs they’ve ever created. I’m lucky to have grown with them. Thankfully, I don’t cry and go through one-sided breakups over Rolling Stone articles anymore. I’m working tirelessly to build my career as a journalist. I have my sights set on one day writing the 5SOS cover story they deserve without the added shock value, because I know the power my words can have on a young fan who may be as emotionally invested as I was at seventeen.

When I met Luke for the first time early last year, I told him a more chilled out but still heartfelt version of all of this, with some minor alterations. He thanked me for sticking around, and I thanked him and the band for creating music and moments worth sticking around for––for showing up when I needed them to.

READ: From Angst to Adult: 5 Seconds of Summer’s Journey to Youngblood