Australian pop punk band 5 Seconds of Summer released new album CALM on March 27, 2020. This is the bands fourth studio album following the release of Youngblood in 2018. The name comes the first letter in each members name ( Calum Hood, Ashton Irwin, Luke Hemmings, Micheal Clifford). They describe the album name as “A nod to our fans that coined us that name in our early days,” said Luke Hemming, “They’ve been using that acronym for a long time. It kind of just sums up that we’re a little bit older and a little bit wiser.” 

When the album they had no idea how much the name would relate with current events. The recent pandemic shook up plans of releasing the album but ultimately the band decided to release the album. “We were gonna go all over the world, do all these kinds of things, and then we just couldn’t,” Hemmings says. “But honestly, we wanted the album out really badly. We were waiting a long time for it to come out.” Although the the coronavirus has stopped them from being able to see each other the band still keeps in touch through video chats.

The album consists of 12 songs with an overall theme of growing and relationships. The song “Old Me” talks about thanking the old you and ot letting people change who you are. The lyrics “Shout out to the old me and everything you showed me glad you didn’t listen when the world was trying to slow me no one could control me,” show the audience that the band does not forget where they came from. The song talks about the struggles they have faced getting to where they are now and how they never gave up. 

The theme of relationships is in most of the songs in the album. In the song “Best Years” it give off a weeding vibe by talking about giving someone the best years of your life and what you want that to consist of. The lyrics “I wanna hold your hair when you drink too much and carry you home when you cannot stand up you did all these things for me when I was half a man for you I wanna hold your hand while we’re growing up.” supports this theme. The album has a lot of different types of love songs from more sappy and cute songs to a sad variety.

Overall this album does a great job a showing the progression of the band and shows how much they have improved since they first started releasing music. Although the music style has changed the bands goal to provide music that their fans can bond with has not changed.