Harder Than It Looks Simple Plan

• 1 Track 1 03:36
• 2 Ruin My Life (feat. Deryck Whibley) 03:19
• 3 The Antidote 03:15
• 4 Track 4 03:26
• 5 Track 5 03:29
• 6 Congratulations 03:16
• 7 Track 7 03:05
• 8 Track 8 03:26
• 9 Track 9 03:59
• 10 Track 10 03:38
• Total Runtime 34:29

Info for Harder Than It Looks

From their new millennium rise to MTV superstardom through pop-punk’s modern resurgence that has introduced their iconic, multi-platinum sound to new audiences around the world, Simple Plan have been an indelible part of pop culture for more than two decades because they’ve never lost sight of what got them there in the first place: their fans. It’s this same sense of mutual respect that’s fully on display on “The Antidote,” the first single from their sixth studio album, Harder Than It Looks, their first new music since 2016’s Taking One For The Team, and the most authentically Simple Plan album since 2004’s Still Not Getting Any.

"We’re incredibly excited to finally share this news with our fans who have waited so patiently for this album. We poured our hearts and souls into these new songs and we’re so proud of this record. More than 20 years into our career, we love being in this band more than ever and still have the same passion for playing music and writing songs together that we’ve had since day one. We made a classic, quintessential Simple Plan record that our fans will absolutely love and it was amazing to go back to our roots and unapologetically embrace what has made this band special to so many people: fun, catchy, honest and emotional songs that will make you feel less alone, put a smile on your face and give you hope. We truly can’t wait for the world to hear these new songs and to play them live everywhere." (Simple Plan)

Free agents for the first time in their storied career, the band kept their circle tight during the recording process, enlisting longtime songwriting partners like We The Kings’ Travis Clark and producers Brian Howes and Jason Van Poederooyen (who worked on the band’s 2011’s album Get Your Heart On!) and Zakk Cervini (blink-182, Good Charlotte).

From the skyscraping choruses of “Congratulations” and “Ruin My Life” (ft. Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley) to the unflinching poignancy of the album-closing “Two,” which instantly ranks alongside “Perfect” and “Untitled (How Could This Happen To Me?)” as one of the band’s best closers ever, Harder Than It Looks certainly respects Simple Plan’s storied career – and the same spirit that helped the band sell 10 million albums worldwide – without being overtly reverent.

The album-opening “Wake Me Up (When This Nightmare’s Over)” is a cathartic rush of familiarity and freshness – not to mention a bit lyrically prescient, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit shortly after the band wrapped the album.

There are even spiritual successors to early material, like the glass-half-full skate-punk-leaning “Best Day Of My Life,” quite a 180 for a band who put a song called “The Worst Day Ever” on their genre-defining, Platinum-selling 2002 debut No Pads, No Helmets...Just Balls. But you won’t find an ounce of fat on the 10-song album, no obvious plays to recapture the radio waves they claimed in the early aughts with smash hits like “I’d Do Anything,” “I’m Just A Kid” and “Addicted.”

Even the new sonic twists feel more like left turns and less like detours: The chromatic cool of the ‘80s new-wave “Slow Motion,” reggae-noir anthem “Anxiety” and sports montage-ready “Iconic” push things forward but feel wholly genuine, updating the band’s songbook with compelling stylistic twists.

Simple Plan

Simple Plan
One day last year, Simple Plan's Pierre Bouvier and Chuck Comeau were sitting in the recording studio trying to come up with lyrics for a track they planned to include on their new album, Get Your Heart On!. Not only did they want to write a song about the emotional power music can have in one's life, they also wanted to capture the sentiment behind the thousands of pieces of mail the band receive at their Montreal headquarters each month from fans all over the world who write to express what Simple Plan's music has meant to them. As Bouvier tells it: 'These letters are pretty overwhelming and humbling at the same time so we wanted to somehow pay homage to those fans. We were sitting there going, ‘I don't know, what do you think they would say?' and Chuck says, ‘Why don't we just ask them?'' The following message was posted on Comeau's Twitter feed: 'We decided to write a song about you guys…Can you tell me how our music has made you feel through the years?'

'Within seconds, the responses started coming in,' Comeau recalls, still marveling at the moment. 'It was a deluge, like a hurricane of answers.' Based on those Tweets, Bouvier and Comeau constructed what is perhaps the first song ever written entirely via Twitter: the poignant album closer 'This Song Saved My Life.' 'Every word is taken from the hundreds of messages we got from our fans,' Comeau says. It's a tribute to these loyal souls (25 of whom showed up from all over the world at a studio in Vancouver to sing on the track after the band tweeted an invite) who have faithfully followed the Canadian quintet since its inception in 1999, through three studio albums, two live albums, and tours to nearly every corner of the globe, including visits to Russia, Israel, Poland, Jakarta, Estonia, South Africa, and The Philippines, as well as extensive sold-out headlining tours of the U.S. and their native Canada.

Simple Plan's connection with its fans has translated into a string of hit singles, including 'I'd Do Anything,' 'Addicted,' and 'Perfect' from their 2002 double-platinum debut No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls, 'Welcome To My Life' and 'Untitled (How Could This Happen To Me)?' from 2004's platinum Still Not Getting Any…, and 'When I'm Gone' and 'Your Love Is A Lie,' from 2008's Simple Plan, which debuted in the Top 3 in Mexico, Brazil, Japan, and Canada, Top 10 in Hong Kong, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, and Germany, and Top 20 in Spain, Finland, and France. Overall, Simple Plan have sold nearly four million albums in the U.S. and Canada and more than 7.5 million albums worldwide.

Now the band are back with Get Your Heart On!, a gloriously fun, boundlessly melodic slice of poppy modern-rock that finds Simple Plan returning to the revved-up energy of No Pads and Still Not Getting Any after taking a slight detour with a darker, more beat-driven sound on their previous album.

'We love and are very proud of our third album and I feel like it was a record we had to make because we wanted to do something different,' bassist David Desrosiers says. 'But now it's time to get back to the high energy songs. We were really itching to have a batch of fast-up tempo songs, because they are really fun to play live.'

One of the first songs written for Get Your Heart On! was album opener 'You Suck At Love.' The chorus' instantly catchy melody and tongue-in-cheek punchline resonated with fans immediately when the band unveiled the song during a string of memorable performances at last year's Bamboozle Roadshow and was a key moment for the new album.

This album contains no booklet.