Busted “don’t want to rush” their new album.
The pop punk trio – comprising Charlie Simpson, Matt Willis and James Bourne – spent some time in Los Angeles working on new material for their follow-up to 2019’s ‘Half Way There’ this year, and also hit the studio with former Bring Me The Horizon member and producer Jordan Fish.
Asked if there are plans for new music from the ‘Year 3000’ rockers, frontman Charlie told NME: “There are! Busted are working on new music at the moment and we’ve just been out in LA doing some stuff. It’s a slow process, but we want the next record that Busted put out to be an important one. We don’t want to rush it. There’s a bunch of songs written already, and hopefully they’ll come out next year, maybe even the year after.”
Charlie says they haven’t nailed it all down yet, but the record will be “different” to their previous releases.
Asked what it’s sounding like, he said: “Varied. I guess that’s the point, that we’re trying different things. When we came back in 2016 we released ‘Night Driver’, which I loved and it is still my favourite Busted album. That was very different because it was an ‘80s-inspired record which didn’t really sound like Busted, but I loved it. Then we did a record after that called ‘Half Way There’, which was more of what Busted would have sounded had I not left the band. It was great to do that as well, but now we want to try something different again – we just haven’t quite landed on what that is yet.”
Charlie continued: “When I say the demos are varied, I mean that there’s a lot of different soundscapes going on. We did a bunch of stuff with Jordan Fish who used to be in Bring Me The Horizon, which was cool, but obviously that was more in the rock arena realm. For now, we just don’t want to rush it. Everyone has to get behind it and feel like it’s the right next move.”
Fans could potentially hear some new songs when they hit the road again next year.
Charlie said: “Possibly… That sounds like I’m trying to hide something, but in reality it’s because I don’t really know yet! I think there could be songs that we play on the tour, but I don’t want to say that because if we don’t then people will be like ‘Well why did you say you would?’ We could, and I would hope that we will, play at least one new song.”
As well as a handful of their own shows, Busted are touring with rivals McFly on the ‘Busted vs McFly’ tour in 2025.
Besides Busted, Charlie fronts heavy rock band Fightstar, who reunited to mark their 20th anniversary with a one-off gig at London’s OVO Arena Wembley in March, and he “100 per cent” sees them doing more stuff together in the future.
The show marked the ‘Paint Your Target’ group’s first concert since their 2015 ‘Behind The Devil’s Back’ tour.