- 2025-07-29
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MUSIC
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5 Seconds of Summer's Michael Clifford Releases Debut Solo Album “SIDEQUEST”
Australian pop rock band 5 Seconds of Summer's guitarist Michael Clifford released his debut solo album “SIDEQUEST” on July 25, 2025 via Hopeless Records.
He is officially the last member of 5 Seconds of Summer to release a solo record.
The album comprises 10 tracks, featuring guest appearances from American DJ and singer-songwriter Porter Robinson, American pop rock band Waterparks, and Cumming-based singer-songwriter Ryan Hall.
Produced by Andrew Goldstein, John Feldmann, JT Daly, Matt Koma, Michael Clifford, Oscar Neidhardt, Porter Robinson, Rudey and Ryan Hall.
Michael Clifford said of the album, “This is just been a journey for me, and something that I've been having fun, exploring and doing. I've This album has taken me a really, really long time to get right. I'm just really for this one, just like having fun. To me, this is just fun. I love the songs that I made. I love the people I got to work with and kind of the stuff that I got to experiment with. I'm just stoked to be here.”- While making the album, Michael Clifford became a father. He had originally done some songs before becoming a dad, but with his solo record, he wanted to explore and remade the album from the perspective of fatherhood.
He told Kyle Meredith about the making of the album, “I had some songs done before I was a dad. It was the biggest thing that obviously ever happened to me in my whole life. I sort of had this realization. I was like, a lot of this stuff doesn't necessarily represent this next kind of like phase for me, and sort of like who I am now, which is like an interesting perspective, because it's not like my album is about being a dad. And it's not like any of this, any of my music really has that kind of like sentiment in it. And I think being a dad with my daughter, really helped me embrace that, kind of like, childlike wonder again. And I think that I sort of went back in and half of the songs I scrapped half of them I wanted to redo completely and change.” - He added, “For me, it's Tuesday, but for her, it's her childhood. So it's like having this approach of every single day is so important, and like all of these things that you're looking at you're watching someone discover something for the first time. And I think that that kind of inspired me when it came to music. Because music is one of the places that you can have that experience with art and stuff. And I think like watching her have that like experience every single day, kind of unjaded me, in a way. I was like, man, this is like, it's wild to watch that happen. So I was like, I have to find a way to inject that into what I'm making. I want everyone who listens to it to have that experience of like, Wow, this is the first time I'm discovering something, and I sort of had more of a clear picture on what I wanted that feeling to be like to me.”
Michael Clifford explained some tracks for the album.
“kill me for always” featuring Porter Robinson
“Porter Robinson has been my favourite artist for a really long time. The idea of us creating something together was just a pipe dream to me. 'kill me for always' was a song that took a lot of trial and error to get this song 100% right. As the first track off my upcoming album, I think it perfectly sets the tone of the beginning of a story.”
“cool”
“This song speaks for itself, and my hope is that when fans hear the lyrics, they'll understand me and hopefully themselves a little better. I've been deliberating on this music long enough, so I can't wait for everybody to hear it — and 'cool' is just the beginning of what's to come. I want this project to make people smile. I'm just out here doing a bunch of sidequests. Now that I'm a dad, everything other than that feels like a sidequest!”
“give me a break!” featuring Waterparks
Michael Clifford: “I'd been really wanting to create something unique with Awsten and Waterparks. Awsten became my person that I would vent to about different things in life and I think that that's the kind of the energy that this song has. It's very authentic to us.”
Awsten Knight: “When Michael asked me to be involved with his album I was beyond flattered; I've been a fan of his for so long and hearing he was doing a solo album instantly got my brain spinning. Writing with him was fun because we pushed every line to the limit. It's been really sick to watch him grow this album from the early stages and can't wait to see how much people love it.“
“enough”
“enough was the song I wrote in 2020 and, when you write something so long ago, you were in a specific moment at that time - I think a lot of people were, and it was heavy.”
“eclipse”
“That song to me what I shat I found like really fun about that one was like I had actually with that one it's like I wanted you to have this feeling of like what parenting is like. It's and that sounds strange, but it's like you genuinely don'y know the structure of the song. Like, it could be like loud noise out of nowhere. It could be like silence for a second. It's like unorthodox in how many like bars it does. And I just I really love the kind of like messaging behind that of being like, man, you just like I it could be anything at any point. So I just I love making that and being able to push like really weird with the sound selection and like going there's like a like the ending breakdown is only like less than like 10 seconds of the song and it's like the full climax of it or whatever. I just it was fun to be able to like create something that was just so all over the place to represent to me what parenting is like. It's just insane.” - source : Apple Music
