For years, fans of the band 5 Seconds of Summer – or more commonly referred to as 5SOS – have been waiting for an album to drop exactly like 5SOS5. Released in September of 2022, the band’s fifth studio album is filled with a wide variety of songs containing different sounds and beats that will each make you cry, dance, or both. Each member of the band has stated that this album was the best representation of themselves, and felt like a new starting point, regardless of their eleven years of working together.

5SOS5 is an album of many firsts, as it is the first 5SOS album featuring a woman’s voice on one of its tracks, and it is also the first album produced by one of the band members themselves, guitarist Michael Clifford. It was worked on for two years during the pandemic and they began working on it directly after the release of their previous album, CALM, in 2020.

The album displays an unstable, contradicting relationship, shown through tracks such as “Bad Omens”, where the narrator finds red flag upon red flag within their relationship, but still decides to ignore them, and “Complete Mess”, where the narrator is only half of a person without their partner, but is a mess when they’re together. However, there is hope that can be found in the track “Older”, featuring Sierra Deaton, a beautiful ballad in which the narrator wants to stay with his partner perpetually. All the songs on the album work well separately just as much as they do cohesively, which positively adds to the overall listening experience. 5SOS5 is not an album to miss.