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Half Way There

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To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. If you’re successful in filtering out the cynical baggage attached to Busted’s reunion – which tries to capitalize on the insurmountable obsession with 90s nostalgia these days – you'll find Half Way There to be a pretty innocent pop-punk album. To give Busted their dues, there’s probably more energy and sharp guitar work than the majority of John Feldmann’s offerings in modern pop-punk (and that says a lot), but there’s such a flavourlessness to the likes of Nineties and Reunion in the way that they lift liberally from the most nebulous touchstone of pop-punk imaginable, bringing an incredibly populist approach forward but very little else. This was one of the tracks where the poor songwriting actually works in a really hilarious meta way, with the song concluding with the band getting back together recording the album you’ve just listened to and rocking out again and how things will be alright if you believe. Read more about the condition New: An item that is still in its original shrink wrap from the manufacturer and the original manufacturer’s seal (if applicable) has not been removed.

As good as Night Driver was as an album and it showed a totally different style to Busted than we was used to, Half Way there, is truly the Busted we know and love. Busted have grown up, that is for sure – however, the band haven’t forgot what made them relevant and ultimately, popular.Obligatory comment about how Fightstar are way better, and Charlie needs to do more Fightstar stuff. Gone are the electronic influences and synth beats of Night Driver, and in their place the band has given us the guitars, the drums, and the pop-punk sheen that original fans fell in love with – albeit, all mixed in with the more mature lyrics of a group in their thirties and a heavy dose of nostalgia for good measure. While Night Driver stood as an entity resembling a fun-filled holiday, Half Way There as a record is a rapturous homecoming and I will happily go on record to say; Half Way There is the best Pop Punk album of the past five years! To the album’s credit, it kept someone as cynical and bitter as me through to the end without cursing at it for being obnoxious, and that says a little bit about the talent handling this record.

Due to inventory and accounting purposes, we do not exchange items received for different items than originally purchased. They constantly revisited each idea to make the album as strong as it could possibly be, and also had the opportunity to work with their dream producer Gil Norton, the man behind classic albums from Foo Fighters and Pixies. The band, made up of James Bourne, Charlie Simpson and Matt Willis, have been working on their upcoming album for the last year and had one simple goal in mind – to make the ultimate Busted album! They wrote more material than ever, much of it at Bourne’s apartment in North London where they spent so much time together back when they first started the band.Bubblegum pop, exaggerated-Americana vocals, the soundtrack to many a millenial’s youth, Busted are what they are, and on ‘Half Way There’, they’ve completely accepted that. Even back when the pop-rock and pop-punk they were so mercenarily emulating, it was telling that Busted always remained firmly in the boyband territory; the sound wasn’t that far from the genuine article in the early 2000s, but both musicianship and lyricism that drew from territory spanning from base to outright stupid was always a heavy implication of the pop machinations behind the scenes to make that sound even more marketable. The ‘ Year 3000’-esque ‘ Shipwrecked in Atlantis’ delivers another fantastical flight of fancy, while ‘ Race to Mars’ takes a look at the space race in a tribute to Elon Musk and Tesla, and once again taps into the band’s penchant for a pop culture reference or two in its lyrics. Ticket’s for the extra dates will go on pre-sale on Wednesday 6 th February at 9am and on general sale on Friday 8 th February at 10am. The started the campaign for the new album by playing three chaotic sold-out shows in a day at the 100 Club, and then dropped a throwback video for ‘Nineties’which revived the days of Top of the Pops, Blind Date, Nirvana and white-suited boy bands.

Yes, at times, the album does feel dated – a drawback of an album based on nostalgia – and yes, it can be difficult to determine where the group fits into the modern musical landscape, but Half Way There is so uniquely Busted that it doesn’t really matter.James Bourne said in an interview, "Once you get halfway through the album, you're officially half way there".

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