Charlie Simpson says Busted won’t change the lyrics to their risqué old songs.
The pop group – which consists of 39-year-old Charlie, James Bourne, 40, and 41-year-old Matt Willis – were teenagers when they formed in 2000 and had hits with tracks like ‘What I Go to School For’, about a schoolboy’s crush on his teacher, and ‘Air Hostess’ which contains the line “That uniform you’re wearing, so hot I can’t stop staring / You’re putting on an awesome show.”
Charlie is loathed to censor any songs in 2024 because the tracks are representative of a moment in time.
Speaking to the Metro newspaper’s Guilty Pleasures column, Charlie said: “Some of the lyrical content of those songs we just wouldn’t write now, so there’s definitely that kind of [gross] feeling, but they’re so well known by our audience that it doesn’t really matter.
“It’s not like we’re coming out with a new song that sounds like those old songs, or lyrics that sound like those. It captures a moment in time so we can just play them on and on.”
Charlie and his Busted bandmates did make one slight alteration to the age of Miss Mackenzie in ‘What I Go To School For’ to reflect their own ages now.
He said: “We changed the teacher’s age in ‘What I Go To School For’ to 53 instead of 33.
“We didn’t want to change them too much, that’s what people want to hear, it’s what they remember, but making the teacher older was a joke change … otherwise, the teacher would be younger than us now!”
The ‘Crashed the Wedding’ hitmaker quit Busted in December 2004 to focus on his metal band Fightstar and the band announced their split in January 2005.
Charlie re-joined Busted in 2015 and he has no regrets about his decision to leave and insists the band is better now for going through those ups and downs.
He said: “I don’t regret one thing. I think everything that has happened in the past has led us to this point now, which is Busted in the best place it’s ever been and I’m really happy with how everything is going.
“It might not have been that way, had history not gone the way it did, you know? Even when I left in 2005, that’s not something I regret, because it was right for me at the time and it was an important part of my journey. So, no regrets!”