“I think what kicked all of that off was The Beatles and The Beach Boys mixed with pop punk and it's quite a fresh sound," explained guitarist Danny Jones on McFly’s sound when they first hit the music scene with their debut single ‘Five Colours In Her Hair’. “You can still have pop melodies over all that. McFly has always had a pop sensibility and I feel like that's what we loved about the 80s. The 80s, back then, this was their pop.” Bassist Dougie Poynter couldn't contain his excitement over the music back in the day either. “That's why the level of songwriting back then was incredible. Can you imagine writing ‘Living On A Prayer?’ It is genius!” “Bon Jovi was today's Lewis Capaldi," laughs Danny. 

With the band’s seventh studio album ‘Power To Play’ to be released on June 9th, McFly haven’t been this excited to release an album in a while. Produced by Jason Perry, they’re ready to bring back what they felt has been missing from music for some time, and that is guitars. “The radio was not playing many guitar driven songs back then, so we were encouraged to maybe steer away from that too, but we were fortunate enough to kind of just do what we wanted. What I love about listening back to all of our albums is that they’re so different. It’s like a little snapshot of what we were into at the time. As you listen you can tell that we’re growing into something which I think is fun.”

“The most important thing to me is that when people listen to it, they feel the way we want them to. It’s that triumphant feeling”, said Dougie proudly. Comparing this new album to the feeling of walking out of the cinema after watching Top Gun filled with “action, excitement and life being worth living,” Danny felt exactly the same. “What we were chasing from the album was something new, fresh and exciting. Most of all, we want people to create memories of this album. The community that the McFly fan base brings is so cool, and the friendships they make are massively important. We can already see certain songs and certain lyrics that fans will connect to the most.”

‘Where Did All The Guitars Go?’, the first taste of the band’s new era, saw the music Danny, Dougie, Tom and Harry grew up listening to play a part in the music they made, especially with the attitude of bands like Motley Crue, Def Leppard and Metallica. It also felt like a throwback to the band’s fourth studio album, ‘radio:ACTIVE’. It’s always been about the music for McFly. “You go through stages in a band and we’ve always known who we are, because that’s who we are live,” expressed Danny. “But on record, sometimes as songwriters, you have to be influenced by so much and accept things that you may not normally accept if you were in a one genre band. Sometimes you have to go back to your roots and play to your soul.”

“But what’s so rad though,” Dougie adds, “is that there are so many sub-genres within rock music and it’s very nuanced. A guitar sound for example can evoke a different kind of feeling from the way it’s played. When I listen to the album, I can hear lots of different references, everything from pop punk to full on 80s hair metal or Metallica’s ‘Black Album’.” “Then it’s straight down the middle with Bruce Springsteen who’s always been a massive part of McFly,” Danny adds. “But it can just be the sound of a kick drum or a snare. For us the whole album is a celebration of all types of guitar music.”

McFly have never been restricted in the sort of music they made, but ‘Power To Play’ will allow them to perform these songs live exactly how they were meant to be. The punk influence has always been present in their music and it still continues as the track ‘Crash’ is “definitely one of the punkiest and the shortest songs we’ve ever done. It’s over within 2 minutes.” The bigger picture, Danny says, is, “this is what the band has always been and on this album, we’ve tried to replicate the best of us live. The best of us live is guitar riffs with personality. For example, we’d play a song and we’d add another guitar solo in it for the live show so we thought, why don’t we do that on the record?”

“We literally asked ourselves, where did the guitars go? We went back to basics of what excites us as a band and not everyone else. A massive part of it is owning our own studio. There was no time restraints. We could have everything set up like we were in rehearsals and have it set up like studio quality. This place allowed us to flourish as a band and have no pressure.” 

For Dougie, “the track ‘Route 55’ was a little tough to write, as we got stuck on the chorus for ages but apart from that, the rest of it just flowed.” Even through this, McFly still managed to keep the strong presence of honesty, energy and the band’s identity. From working collectively as a band during the writing and recording process, “where we would  jam ideas and see where they went”, the influences that came to play on this album and having fun being at the forefront of it all, McFly are ready to make a statement. ‘Land Of The Bees’, the second song off ‘Power To Play’, “was the band’s most Rush-inspired song, in that we were in that headspace where we can’t have too many riffs,” explained Dougie. “For this album though, I just wanted to keep writing for it. We had to hand in this album in September/October of last year and after that, we didn’t stop. There’s lots of ideas that have popped up since because we’ve loved making it that we didn’t want to stop!”

Now that their ideas have become a reality and that within a few months, their highly anticipated album ‘Power To Play’ will no longer just be theirs, and hopefully reaches the ears of the “kids with long hair and get them excited enough to pick up a guitar.” When it comes to taking this album on the road, being able to play the album is just one thing that Danny and Dougie are looking forward to. “When we play songs like ‘Five Colours In Her Hair’ live, it sounds better. We’re always trying to perfect it, but this is the first album where we can just play it exactly how it is,” Danny exclaimed. “There are a lot of technical things, like guitar solos that I never thought I’d play on a McFly record. I felt like a kid in a sweet store because I was ripping some guitar solos like I used to do in college. It’s amazing to have that. I think it’ll be one of the easiest transitions for us to have to make.”

SARAH AKOYMANYI

Pre-save the album here.