You are my sunshine, my only sunshine You make me happy when skies are grey You'll never know dear, how much I love you Please don't take my sunshine away

Simple Plan are one of my favourite bands, so naturally I was excited when it was announced their 5th studio album was in the making. I was even more thrilled when Pierre announced that they’d be going back to their punk roots (think No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls and Still Not Gettin Any) When they released “Saturday” it’s safe to say I was fairly disappointed, though they have since stated that song will not be on the new album and was just a song they threw together and quite liked. Boom was the real first preview of the new album. This is a song I can get behind. It recaptured their old school pop-punk feeling and was really catchy and fun. I felt good about what SP5 would sound like. The next release was I Don’t Wanna Be Sad. It didn’t exactly have the same punk sound that Boom did but it was catchy enough and I quite enjoyed it. Then came I Don’t Wanna Go To Bed.

Brace yourselves for some honesty.

I Don’t Wanna Go To Bed sounds horrible. It’s a charts-sounding, feeling lacking pop song that falls way short of the standard set by Boom. Instead of the NPNHJB and SNGA era sound we were promised, we get an underwhelming GYHO/Summer Paradise sounding track, featuring a hip hop artist no less.

I understand that bands change their sounds, but with each single released from SP5, the quality has seriously decreased. I’m still cautiously optimistic that SP5 will have a closer sound to the Simple Plan I know and love, but overall I’m very unimpressed. Especially due to the fact the band stated they’d be going back to their punk roots, then to release songs that are not that at all. I guess as more songs off SP5 are released, the overall sound of the album will become clearer. If the rest of the songs are more like Boom, that’d be fantastic, but if they all sound like I Don’t Wanna Go To Bed, I will not enjoy the record one bit.

So those are my thoughts on what we know so far of Simple Plan’s 5th album. I’m thinking I might review it when the album is officially released, where I will either stand by what I said here or be forced to take back these words. I honestly hope it’s the latter.