Following an 18-month break from releasing music right after the successful release of their fourth studio album, CALM, 5 Seconds of Summer released “2011” on December 3, 2021, a nostalgic song that celebrates and reflects upon their 10-year journey as a band. The deluxe edition of the album contains 5 more songs than the standard edition — “Moodswings,” “Flat Line,” “Emotions,” “Bloodhound,” and “TEARS!”
However, the band’s fifth album’s lead single, “COMPLETE MESS,” was released on March 2, 2022, and is the first track of the band written and produced only by the four members.
5SOS5’s second single, “Take My Hand,” was released on April 1, 2022. The band’s tour for both this album and 2020’s CALM is also named after this song. However, the version that ended up on the final tracklist was “Take My Hand (Joshua Tree Version),” which is roughly 58 seconds longer than the original single.
On May 10th, 2022, 5 Seconds of Summer have revealed the official album’s tracklist via a thread on Twitter. A day later, on May 11th, the album’s third single, “Me, Myself & I,” was released.
The album’s official name and release date was announced via Twitter also on May 11, 2022.
“BLENDER,” the album’s fourth single, was surprise released on July 13th, 2022.
The album’s fifth single “Older,” which features Luke Hemmings‘ bride-to-be, Sierra Deaton, was also surprise released on September 7th, 2022.
“Bad Omens” is the album’s last single, with its music video being released on September 26, 2022, three days after 5SOS5’s release.
It is absolutely diverse in every sense and the band has really pushed to attain a grounded identity in pop and rock. It has really progressed in both lanes. The pop songwriting has been worked on and we love melodic songwriting, hooks and unique concepts. But on the other hand, the rock side of the band has improved in terms of the recording itself, and I have been more into the musicianship. Obviously, that comes with recording the record internally; the band are actually prog rockers at heart.
[Prog rock] is kind of complicated rock and roll. It has lots of fancy parts and the compositions are more complex than your regular pop song structure. So, it has got a bit more above!
— Ashton Irwin via an April 2022 interview with Wonderland Magazine.
The album is definitely very introespective. I think, like a lot of people in the last couple years, the only way to look was inward — For us, anyway. Lyrically looking into everything that’s ever happened to us has been a big sort of topic, and not doing this everyday and being on the road was kind of a different experience for us. For me, the whole album is the most introespective and the most lyrically beautiful [one that we’ve made so far]. There’s just so much heart in it.
— Luke Hemmings via a May 2022 interview with Apple Music.
We let the fans name this [album]. I think we were sort of at this thing where we took about two years or so to make it […] When our fourth album, CALM, came out, our fans were already kind of referring to the next album as 5SOS5 anyway, and that sort of got to this point where we were, like, “It’s gonna be called 5SOS5 no matter what we call it.” So, this for us is sort of our self-titled album re-released, it’s kind of how we’ve been thinking about it. I love the idea of our fans naming this one, and them being sort of the reason why we called it that.
— Michael Clifford via an interview with 1075 The River.
In a March 2022 interview with the Zach Sang Show, the band revealed that they were stuck between two titles — they have not said which ones they were.
Fans have speculated that those two possible titles were 5SOS5 — which ended up being chosen — and The Feeling of Falling Upwards — because of an One Night Only Orchestra event that will take place in London on September 22nd, 2022, to promote the album.