With its catchy lyrics and can’t-get-out-of-your-head chorus, it’s no surprise that I’ve been blasting 5 Seconds of Summer‘s single on repeat for the past few weeks.
The song also has me thinking, how does one come up with a line like, “She looks so perfect standing there in my American Apparel underwear?” Well, when I got on the phone with half the Australian pop-punk group, Michael Clifford and Ashton Irwin, who are releasing their debut EP in the U.S. on April 1, I just had to find out.
“We wrote [the song] in L.A. with our friend Jake Sinclair, and he’s worked with some of our favorite bands, like Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco,” Ashton said. “So it was amazing to work with him. He had this idea of a song ‘she looks so perfect standing there in my American Apparel underwear,’ and he’s like, ‘Bear with me — it’s kind of weird.’ And we are like, ‘We love weird.’ “
It looks like being weird has paid off. The video for the song has been viewed more than 7 million times on YouTube since its release three weeks ago, which may or may not be due to the fact that everyone in the clip (excluding the bandmembers) gets naked.
“We always wanted nudity in our video,” Ashton said. “So we sort of were like, how do we get this video treated properly? The underwear line was an obvious thing, and the director, Frank Borin, came to us with the idea that the song puts people into a craze and they want to take their clothes off. So it’s perfect. So we just ran with it.”
The guys are gearing up for their first U.S. headlining tour next month before going back on the road as One Direction‘s opening act on the Where We Are tour. And for those of you wondering if the guys actually do wear American Apparel underwear, it turns out they aren’t really fans.
“Not really,” Ashton said. “They are not the most attractive underwear.”
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