5 Seconds Of Summer’s Michael Clifford releases introspective debut single ‘Cool’

5 Seconds Of Summer‘s Michael Clifford has released his debut single, ‘Cool’.

‘Cool’ is the first hint of Clifford’s own forthcoming debut album ‘Sidequest’, which will be released via Hopeless Records. No release date has been set yet.

The track is a polished pop-rock reflection of Clifford’s insecurities, which sees him muse: “She reads my mind, she knows that I’m / Overthinking what I’ve been tryna say (Am I cool enough? Am I cool enough?)”

Clifford also self-deprecatingly refers to himself as “the guy who caught fire with the coloured hair”, referencing the incident where he was burnt by pyrotechnics at 5SOS’ 2015 show at London’s Wembley Arena. The musician wrote that he was “OK” on social media the following day.

Take a listen to the track below:

The Australian guitarist will become the third member of the band to release solo material, following drummer Ashton Irwin’s 2020 record ‘Superbloom’ and frontman Luke Hemmings’ 2021 album ‘When Facing The Things We Turn Away From’.

5SOS also spoke to NME in 2022, where they discussed being named NME‘s Worst Band In The World three times.

“Y’all called us the worst band and that affects a guy,” Irwin laughed. “That guy at 28 doesn’t give a fuck and I actually think it’s awesome. But when you’re 17 and 18 you go, ‘I’m in the worst band? What?’ and it’s like what do you mean? What does that mean to me? What did I do wrong?

“But that’s just a relative example of how things can be said about the character of the band, really do affect the stability of the whole thing.”

At the time, the band were poised to release their 5th studio album ‘5SOS5’. In the same interview, Hemmings said that “in many ways, this album feels like the first one to me. The debut was recorded when we were living in London and didn’t really know what we were doing – and this time around, we had this freedom and sense of feeling carefree, in a way that we didn’t really have the last time around.

“I think that really shines through in the lyrics: everything has changed, and nothing has changed for us. It was nice to feel as though we’re able to do all of this on our own.”

In other news, Billie Joe Armstrong has revealed he originally wrote a Green Day hit song for 5 Seconds Of Summer.