Earlier this year, during each night on their tour, The 5 Seconds of Summer Show, 5SOS offered an earnest refrain to their audience. “Memories I hold to keep safe, and I live for that look on your face,” all four members sang into their mics during “Best Friends,” from their latest album 5SOS5. The tour — complete with elaborate skits, copious amounts of confetti, and fan-favorite deep cuts — was a celebration not only of their 10th anniversary as a band, but also of the fanbase they’ve cultivated during that time.
Now, both the band and their fans can revel in the memory of their own personal eras tour with the newly released documentary-concert film The 5 Seconds of Summer Show. The hour-long release, available on YouTube, captures 5SOS’ Amsterdam concert in October paired with behind-the-scenes content capturing how the tour’s concept came together.
“From the beginning, when we set out to do the tour, we really wanted to get the vibe right of like, what’s the tone that’s being set at the beginning of every 5SOS show? And how can we make the light that’s kept us going of humor and fun mixed with high energy shows,” guitarist Michael Clifford shared in the doc.
The film features the Australian band performing Saturday Night Live-level skits on stage from cosplaying as doctors delivering brutal news (“You’ve been diagnosed a 5SOS fan”) to an ad for 5Sauce, paired with giant condiment bottles when the crowed gets sauced.
And each night, the fans (and chance) got to decide which of the six songs printed on a giant inflatable dice 5SOS would add to the set. Hemmings would throw it into the crowd and, when it returned to the stage, flip it over to show what it landed on. The deep cuts included “Voodoo Doll,” “If You Don’t Know,” “Heartache on the Big Screen, “English Love Affair,” “Wrapped Around Your Finger” and — much to their apparent dismay — “Heartbreak Girl.”
“Doing this tour, and it being so well received, has even more ignited this new frame of mind for the band,” frontman Luke Hemmings added. “We can have these songs that maybe sound like this and feel more in touch with the younger songs we wrote, but also going forward into a next album and tour, personally not being afraid of having a bit more fun with it and really capturing what the spirit of the band is.”
At the end of each night, 5SOS closed out the show with a double encore of “Outer Space” from 2015’s Sounds Good Feels Good and “Youngblood” from 2018’s Youngblood. In Amsterdam, as they launched into the latter song, Hemmings cut to the heart with with a parting message: “Thank you, we’ll see you in a couple of years.”
5SOS released five studio albums over nearly ten years — plus three live albums — and have taken each around the world on tour. The years flew by, and now that the 5 Seconds of Summer Show is complete, Clifford (who recently welcomed his first child), Hemmings, drummer Ashton Irwin, and bassist Calum Hood have returned to living mode as fans await their shift back into album mode.
It’s only goodbye for now, but the documentary-concert film creates a tangible capsule of their most ambitious and celebratory tour yet. “I’m here and it’s happening in real time. I’m seeing people connect with the music. I’m seeing everybody grow up. I’m seeing people sing their favorite fucking songs — I’m seeing the ones they don’t like so much and I’m seeing the ones that they like surprisingly more than others,” Clifford said. “It’s just been the wildest, craziest journey over the years, all we’ve wanted to do is just make sure that our fans have enjoyed everything that we’ve done and the music that we’ve made and the shows that we’ve put on and just connect with them.”
Like the other major career-spanning tours we’ve witnessed this summer, The 5 Seconds of Summer Show centered the unbreakable bond formed when fans grow up with their favorite artists as the soundtrack of their lives. “I think the fans have really responded to it because if you’ve been following the band for 10 years,” Hemmings said, “it’s like your whole youth.”