Although they began their career as an opening act for One Direction, the Australian pop-punk band 5 Seconds of Summer have been the subject of serious analysis since their breakout. A 2015 Rolling Stone profile of the band resembles Cameron Crowe’s 1975 interview of the Eagles, in which the writer tagged along with the band at wild house parties, songwriting sessions, and outings to Los Angeles haunts like the Troubadour.
Similarly, Patrick Doyle’s 2015 cover story of 5 Seconds of Summer opens in the aftermath of a party the band threw at a Los Angeles mansion. As Doyle waits in the kitchen the next morning, eager to begin the interview, each member wanders in and out of the room in a hungover blur. “Sorry, I’m in my underwear,” said frontman Luke Hemmings as he prepared breakfast for himself.
The sixth album by 5 Seconds of Summer, Everyone’s a Star, is a testament to their stardom and their credentials as a rock group. In 2014, John Feldmann, the producer of the band’s debut album, told Billboard, “They’re real writers and talented musicians. There was no formulaic Simon-Cowell-finding-a-bunch-of-handsome guys.” Everyone’s a Star proves this point more effectively than any previous 5 Seconds of Summer record. The downtempo, synth-heavy outro of “istillfeelthesame” exemplifies the group’s willingness to use production details to enhance the song’s concept, imbuing a pop-punk romp with a reflective quality.
A single question has animated the career of the Australian upstarts: are they a boy band with a rock edge, or a punk-rock experiment with a grip on pop culture? Everyone’s a Star can afford to grapple with this question because the band has already answered it. This release is the group’s first with Republic Records, a major label that houses some of pop’s biggest acts. However, isn’t a simplistic boyband categorization exactly what 5 Seconds of Summer wanted to avoid?
Artistic credibility aside, Everyone’s a Star asserts that 5 Seconds of Summer are a band, and will stay a band. Its questions about stardom can only be answered by a collective. In “Boyband”, Hemmings croons, “Boy in a boy band, imaginary boyfriend / Make that monkey dance.” In “No. 1 Obsession”, he shouts, “Crush me with the sunshine of your heart,” a cynical lyric that describes fame in a way One Direction could never have articulated without tainting its sunny disposition.
Alongside rock theatrics, the vulnerable moments of Everyone’s a Star stand out. “I’m Scared I’ll Never Sleep Again” is a tender confession of heartbreak backed by shimmering synths. “Ghost” describes the loneliness of wandering the world without your other half, as atmospheric harmonies replace electric guitars.
Everyone’s a Star shows that synths and catchy melodies cannot tarnish 5 Seconds of Summer‘s image when relatability made them famous in the first place. “She looked so perfect standing there / In my American Apparel underwear,” said Hemmings on the group’s 2014 breakout single “She Looked So Perfect”. This lyric romanticizes a detail of ordinary life without irony. Consequently, the band will always maintain a level of accessibility even when fame becomes their muse.
An alternative version of the record’s cover art shows 5 Seconds of Summer at the center of a throng of fans, camera flashes blurring the crowd. They have never escaped the “boyband” label because, no matter the quality of their music, one question remains at its heart: What does it mean to be an object of affection? In a 2025 interview with Rolling Stone, Hemmings said, “People romanticize and sexualize a younger version of yourself, and you start to get these insecurities of ‘Oh, I don’t look like that anymore.'”
Although a “boy band” may have less artistic credibility than a “rock band”, audiences idolize them both for the same reasons: they document the impulsiveness of youth in glamorous, aspirational settings. For those who experience that phenomenon, it may feel fleeting. However, their job as performers is to capture it so that onlookers can observe it.
As a solo artist, Luke Hemmings has released two albums of psychedelic dream-pop, more autobiographical and introspective than anything 5 Seconds of Summer have created. These records won him the credibility the band fought for since its inception, while empowering him to return to the group with a new outlook: pop stardom can be mined for punk-rock inspiration from the inside out.
In “Life in the Fast Lane”, the Eagles wrote about the hustle of maintaining their career. On Everyone’s a Star, 5 Seconds of Summer prove a similar point by marketing stardom as universal. Embodying the hopes and dreams of a massive fanbase is a heavy burden. In “Jawbreaker”, the closing track, they observe a muse with a tone similar to “She Looks So Perfect”, saying, “You’re my American jawbreaker / Swinging from the mezzanine.” Six albums into their career, the band’s loyalty to the reckless spirit of their early days underpins their longevity. Being an obsession may be a serious endeavor after all.