5SOS’ New Album Is The Band’s Boldest Shift
5 Seconds of Summer’s Everyone’s a Star! feels like a band fully stepping into its adulthood—sonically bolder, emotionally sharper, and more intentional than anything they’ve made before. This album isn’t interested in recreating past formulas; instead, it leans into sparse electronic textures, heavy percussion, and a kind of confessional songwriting that understands fame not as glamour but as a mirror that distorts and exposes. The result is a record that glows and wounds at the same time.
From the opening moments, the title track sets an atmosphere that’s both self-aware and vulnerable. It pulses with electronic warmth, but there’s a quiet unease underneath it. The band plays with the idea of universal stardom—the pressure to shine, the fear of dimming, and the strange loneliness that comes when everyone expects brightness from you. Rather than an anthem, it lands more like a thesis: this is an album about being seen and misunderstood at once.
NOT OK shows the band at their most explosively candid. It’s fast, punchy, and deliberately messy in a way that captures emotional derailment. The verses feel like they’re tripping over themselves, and the chorus hits like a release valve finally bursting. There’s a deliberate tension between sleek production and jagged emotion; the song never tries to soothe anything, and that honesty makes it one of the album’s most gripping moments. It’s 5SOS tapping into the chaotic energy of their early years, but channeling it with much more maturity and precision.
Telephone Busy takes that emotional turbulence but disguises it under something more playful. The song moves with a kind of restless bounce—quick vocal delivery, elastic basslines, and a rhythm that mirrors the anxiety of waiting for someone who won’t pick up. It’s clever without being gimmicky. Beneath its bright exterior lies a portrait of miscommunication and self-sabotage, the kind that spirals into overthinking and distance. The band has always been strong storytellers, but here the narrative feels especially vivid and cinematic.
Then there’s Ghost, easily one of the most affecting tracks on the record. Minimalist and haunting, it leaves space for silence to do as much storytelling as the lyrics. The emotions here are quiet but heavy—regret, fear, longing, the way a person can haunt their own memories. The vocals feel almost fragile, as if they’re tracing the outline of a feeling rather than stating it directly. It’s the kind of track that sneaks up on you and lingers long after the album ends.
Across the record, the production choices are strikingly cohesive. Synths, atmospheric pads, crisp drums, and layered vocals tie the songs together, but each track still carves out its own emotional landscape. The band’s chemistry feels renewed; they’re not fighting for space but building space together. Lyrically, the album orbits themes of identity, sleeplessness, inner conflict, and the odd magnetism of self-destructive habits. Even when songs touch similar emotions, they do so from different angles, giving the album a sense of narrative unfolding rather than repetition.
If the album has a flaw, it’s that its polish sometimes risks smoothing over the rough edges that first defined 5SOS—but even that seems intentional. This is a band choosing clarity over chaos, reflection over rebellion. They’re not pretending to be who they were at nineteen. They’re showing who they became after years of pressure, distance, success, and self-reckoning.
Everyone’s a Star! is not just a reinvention; it’s a self-portrait. It’s vulnerable, ambitious, and musically confident, the kind of album that marks a turning point rather than a continuation. It proves that 5 Seconds of Summer can evolve without losing the emotional core that made people care in the first place.
