McFly are back with Power To Play,their biggest, boldest and most brilliantly noisy statement yet. Their highly anticipated 7th album is an all-out celebration of rock music and will be released on June 9th, via BMG. Pre-order Power To Play here. Ahead of that, McFly will give fans a taster of the record with the very important question, Where Did All The Guitars Go? The first track will is out now and you can listen below!
Throwing off the shackles of expectations and focusing on the things they love most about making music together, Power To Play sees McFly at their most honest but also with fun at the forefront. With production, songwriting and design talent all within the band, this record sees them make the record they have always wanted to make. Produced by Danny, alongside their good friend Jason Perry, the album is full of hair metal cheese, glam rock glitter and heavy metal attitude with hints of Van Halen, Mötley Crue, Poison and Def Leppard.
Undoubtedly one of the UK’s most successful bands, McFly have scored seven #1 singles, released six albums, two of which were chart-toppers and have played thousands of sold out shows. They have sold over 10 million records worldwide, won numerous awards including a BRIT for Best Pop Act, have over 1.2 million monthly Spotify listeners and have picked up over 91 million views on their YouTube channel.
‘Power to Play’ Tracklist:
- Where Did All The Guitars Go?
- Land Of The Bees
- Forever’s Not Enough
- God of Rock & Roll
- I’m Fine
- Taking Back Tonight
- Honey I’m Home
- Route 55
- Crash
- Make It Out Alive
- Shine On
We caught up with McFly bassist, the lovely Dougie Poynter, earlier this week as he talks about the upcoming album ‘Power to Play’, latest single Where Did All The Guitars Go? and more!
So exciting news your new album Power to Play has just been announced for release on 9th June, how excited are you to show this to your loyal fans as well as new fans?
Oh incredibly excited I think but we we haven’t really sat on anything this long. I think the biggest thing for us is that this is gonna sound cool live and that they’re all songs made for being played live.
Every single song we were like, ‘this will be cool because of the crowd participation in this’ and it was all big stadium rock that the album was inspired by so it was built for stadiums and arenas and just like large crowds of people.
You had the pleasure of working with Jason Perry on the album, who is a good friend of the band, what was it like working with Jason on this?
Ah Jason is like our oracle, god yeah he’s like the the spirit animal of McFly. There’s just something about that man I absolutely love. He’s one of the best people in the world and one of the most inspiring people,
He understands our band on like across the spectrum and understands like the kind of commercial side that we’re in. The rock side and then and then like the pop side and sort of straight down the middle where he knows that we’ve always wanted to do all of it or it’s important for us.
I feel like Jason is one of the most important ingredients to that band.
Your latest single, Where Did All The Guitars Go? is set for release on Friday, how pumped are you to finally get this one out there to the public?
Oh man I’m super stoked, I’m nervous because we’ve been sat on some of these songs now because it’s just the way timing worked out. We can sit on for some of them for like 2 years.
We’ve always had this in our back pocket for so long and now it’s time to release our little babies out into the world and they’re gonna be judged
It feels like it feels like throwing your babies of a cliff into the fucking crocodiles.
It’s so fun though like it’s just one of the best parts being in a band, the feeling of momentum. You know you write this and it’s amazing, it’s like it’s an absolute honour to be able to write music for a living and then release it into the world. It’s like how many people get to do that for a job? So I feel really privileged.
What song from the upcoming Power To Play album means most to you?
I listen to the the album in the car like usually once a week or so and the one I still get goose bumps over the song called Make It Out Alive. I wrote that after watching the film ‘Don’t Look Up’, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, I watched it twice in a row then came in to the studio with this feeling of kind of doom.
I mean it’s still dark times as as we speak now really isn’t it so I mean it’s just that you know just having to look trying to look into the future and trying to have a little hope I guess isn’t it.
McFly have also been announced to perform in August for Lewis Capaldi, are you a big fan of his?
I’m a huge fan, he’s a dude, he’s an absolute dude.
I can’t wait, when we got those shows confirmed I was like ‘wow that’s one of the most exciting things I’ve heard in ages’. We don’t often do supporting slots because we don’t really get the right opportunities.
This is an incredible opportunity.
Would you ever want to launch a solo career on the coming years and play more intimate venues like you did with INK?
I really really loved doing that (referring to INK), it was so much fun and the guys are still my best mates. Everyone only really heard the EP that we did but we wrote um I mean like yeah like must have had like 50 songs or something.
I have no plans to do that again but I’m not completely writing it off. I still write with Charlie (Charles Aaron Zobel) from INK now, we wrote Make It Out Alive and I’m Fine together.
So Busted recently announced they will be touring this year for their 20 year anniversary greatest his tour, will you be attending any of shows in September?
Yeah I’ll be there, to throw my boot at them, but I’ll definitely be there.
If you could work with any band, artist or producer on a new song, who would it be and why?
I think I’d like to work with Butch Vig, Bob Rock, oh and Max Martin, shit. I had a dream about this other day if Max Martin was given a brief of McFly meets Van Halen, what would that sound like?
Working with Mark Hoppus was an absolute dream – he wrote on this album as well.
What is your all time favourite song since forming the band in 2003?
We’ve got a song called ‘That Girl’ that was the first McFly song that I ever heard that Tom (Tom Fletcher) and James Bourne from Busted wrote. I absolutely fell in love with it within the first few seconds of the riff – it just summed up everything what the band was about and I remember thinking that was ‘absolutely fucking genius.’
I think it’s incredible, I still love playing it.