Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Back in the Driving seat
The boys reveal how the years spent apart gave them time to fine-tune their talents
It’s been 15 years since Busted first broke into the charts with What I Go To School For. With their gelled spikes, poprock tunes and super-bright lyrics, Matt Willis, Charlie Simpson and James Bourne became the ultimate secret guilty pleasure almost overnight.
And while few adults in the early noughties would have admitted they loved the trio’s uber-upbeat musical stylings, even fewer would genuinely not know the words to Year 3000.
Now, more than a decade after Charlie decided to quit, the band are back together and have proved such a huge hit – even playing the main stage at V Festival this summer – that they are now about to play the Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday. It seems fans can’t get enough of them and their tunes.
Charlie, now 32 and a dad of one, says: “It’s better for the time apart. I guarantee if we’d stayed together we wouldn’t be here now.”
James, 34, adds: “And it’s great to see the love for the band still there. It’s a completely different experience because we’re all much better now.”
Matt, also 34, jokes: “I was trying to think of another way to say that! But yes we’re all better because we’re not 16 years old.”
The band sold more than five million records in their first assault on the charts, before Charlie went to find his darker side in rock band Fightstar.
He admits he said “no less than 20 times” that he would never rejoin Busted – before finally seeing the light.
After sell-out tours in 2016 and releasing their new album Night Driver to rave reviews, Charlie admits he’s enjoying himself a lot more nowadays.
“It was such a whirlwind the first time round,” he says. “We were very young and it happened very quickly. Now it feels like we appreciate it on a different level.”
James and Matt have been back together for a bit longer, of course – after teaming up with the Mcfly boys for the supergroup Mcbusted in 2013. But we won’t be seeing the boyband extravanganza again.
“Mcbusted, that was a thing that we did,” says Matt. “And I liked the fact that it was effing huge and everyone loved it – yet it was just a bit of fun.”
Their hiatus also gave the boys time to fulfil other dreams.
James says: “I had this weird obsession with the Backstreet
Boys singing one of my songs. So when that happened, that was the peak – ticked off the list.”
Matt, meanwhile, has started a family with his dream woman, wife Emma Willis, 41.
“I’m punching way above my weight – I’m very well aware of that,” he laughs.