Flashback: 5SOS cover Katy Perry at Summertime Ball 2014
This is Flashback, where we’re reminiscing about some of the most iconic and obscure moments in alt-rock history. This week, we’re looking at when beloved Aussie boy band 5 Seconds of Summer performed a cheeky cover of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" for a sea of screaming fans at the 2014 Summertime Ball.
Let's go back to the 2010s. In the music industry, we were experiencing the ripple effect of a post-internet generation, across genres. The world of sound, media, content, accessibility, and style felt both new, and old — and the cyclical nature of trends was hitting pop music and its subgenres, hard. "Boy bands" were back. But bands it wasn't entirely an echo of the Lou Perlman-manufactured O-Town, these new groups had drive and gumption, propelled less by dance routines and more so by reality competition shows and burgeoning social media platforms on which their vocal performances were noticed and upheld.
Read more: Fan poll: 5 best pop-punk band of all time
By 2014, the Australian 5 Seconds of Summer, who discredit the term "boy band," preferring to remain both genreless and label-free when it comes to this terminology, were fairly new to the scene, but already known by the world from their popular YouTube channel. Though their primarily female audience might easily feed into the idea that they are a traditional "boy band," the tone and style of this group has never been traditional — between original lyricism, and emo and pop-punk inspirations like Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, and Fall Out Boy, the band was long since set apart from their more polished cohorts.
That being said, however, they attempted to reject the "boy band" of it all. Their fandom always felt more like that of the Backstreet Boys than that of those solidly set in the alternative space. Success had followed them and amassed with incredible speed after their transition from the computer screen to festival circuit, and it was clear there was something special about this band, especially in their live performance and the reactions it garnered, which ultimately led to the release of their live album LIVESOS. Paying tongue-in-cheek tribute to the boy band and pop music phenomenon they may — or may not — have become, and the skinny-jeans and ringer tee-clad, heavily female fanbase they'd secured, the album included a tongue-in-cheek cover of "Teenage Dream," by the pop princess Katy Perry. It's the crossover we never knew we needed, and it still holds up today. Check out their live performance of the song below.
