Did you find it harder writing the songs for this new record than you did before with any of the others?
Matt: I found this album quite tough. If I’m honest, this was the hardest record we’ve ever made, or I’ve ever made. It was quite a struggle. We’ve probably written 50 songs in this record, and we scrapped two albums worth before we decided which direction to take. While we had an album budget to make this from the record company, we spent that on demos. We then had to do some gigs to earn money to make the record because we spent a long time messing around. It was really hard. It shouldn’t have been. It should have been the purest, most natural thing in the world but we made it really complicated and tried to do so many different things.
Obviously, you’ve got a tour coming up next year. Have you found it hard to write songs now 15 years later? Do you find it harder writing songs now than you did before?
Matt: I found this album quite tough. If I’m honest, this is the hardest record we’ve ever made, or I’ve never made. It was quite a struggle. We’ve probably written 50 songs in this record, and we scrapped two albums worth before we decided which direction to take. While we had an album budget to make this– With a record company, you have a lack of budget to make your album, we spent that on demos. We are trying to introduce some gigs to earn money to make the record because we spend a long time messing around. It was really hard. It shouldn’t have been. It should have been the most simple, easiest thing in the world but we made it really complicated and tried to do so many different things and work with different people, and overthink it. We would think about what is budgeted and what we’re going to do and how we’re going to be, all that kind of stuff that goes through your head. Is this going to work, is this going to go very good, all that stuff which really doesn’t actually matter for a band like Busted when all we had to do is go, “Do you know what? Let’s just write a Busted album.” That’s basically, what we did in the end. We wrote a little pop-punk album, and it was the most fun fucking album to record in the end. We love it, we really vibe on it. Do you know what, it doesn’t really fit in today’s climate if I’m honest. It’s kind of an album which doesn’t really work, doesn’t fit on the right idea. Rock music is nowhere right now. If you listen to the radio, if you listen to anything really, there’s no music out there at all. You can’t find a guitar on the radio, let alone a live drum kit. It’s a bizarre landscape for us right now. We just decided, “Do you know what?” This may speak to our fans, and hopefully, they’ll dig it, and they can come and see us on tour, and we could make more music. That’s the way we saw it happening.
I agree with you. It’s like you say, on the radio, you could go to nearly all of the radio stations, it’s tough to listen and find any music that is played by a band. It’s all electronic music or stuff that’s been done in a studio on a keyboard or on a computer.
Matt: Yes, which is great. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for that. There’s nothing wrong, but it’s the awful dance music that I hear on the radio as well. It’s terrible pop music that I’m hearing, but people seem to really dig it, and it seems to be doing really well. I personally think its rubbish and really hard to listen to. Do you know what? The other night on TV, I was watching the X-Factor, and I’ve just been listening to all this rubbish, and watching all these people sing terrible songs badly awful, and then suddenly this advert came on. It was a track by the band Royal Blood, and I heard that snare drum kit, I was so excited of that, man, this is what is missing. A real-life band is really missing from today’s landscape.
There is just nothing really out there, and it’s a shame because we’ve made an album which I think is really great and it won’t get played anywhere, and we know that going in. We’ve created an album that won’t go and get played (on the radio), which is a tragedy.
Is that because of the PR or is that because they like the control that, say, certain individuals of the music industry have over who gets what airplay?
Matt: No, it’s just the current state of the music industry. It’s all playlist generated. I’m not moaning, don’t get me wrong because as long as our fans buy it and we can go on tour, and we can go and play live gigs, and we can have money for that, we can keep the band running. It’s not like I’m moaning I’m not saying, “Please, put us on the radio.” I understand that we are not the current musical taste which is fine because we have a fan base who hopefully will enjoy us. If you’re a young musician, if you’re a young guitar player or a young bass player, I’d be like, “What am I going to do?? Do you know what I mean? It would be a struggle, it’d be hard because you’re basically going to go, “I’m going to form a band, I’m probably not going to get signed, and have to do everything independently, and play little tiny venues for the rest of my career because this music is not being given the platform it needs to expand.” Which is tough and hard.
