Get Your Heart On!

Release date: June 21st 2011

Producer: Brian Howes

Studio: Van Howes Studios, Conway Recording Studios, Man Of The Hour studio, Power Plant Studio, Planet Studios

Song-writing sessions: July 2009 – July 2010

Recording-sessions: July 27th 2010 – November 10th 2010

Current status: released

Tracklist:

The works on Simple Plan’s fourth album started in July 2009 when Pierre and Chuck got back together for the first writing sessions. The two knew that after such experiments with sounds on their self-titled record, which didn’t prove to be as successful as they hoped, they needed to go back to their roots and create an album that would be more in the vein of their first and second record, but with a modern radio-friendly twist.

After having worked together for years, it was crucial for Pierre’s and Chuck’s cooperation to introduce something fresh into their work. The band decided to hire additional song-writers, who would sit down with Pierre and Chuck and write songs together. This allowed Chuck and Pierre to have a third person in the room, who could step in the song-writing process, when the two would not agree on the direction where a song should be heading. During the whole song-writing process, which lasted until July 2010, Chuck and Pierre co-wrote with a large number of song-writers, such as Desmond Child, Brian Howes, Rivers Cuomo, Julian Emery, Ryan Petersen, Nolan Sipe, Claude Kelly, Jim Irwin, David Hodges, Emmanuel Kiriakou, Michael Warren, Matt Squire or Toby Gad.

Besides allowing more song-writers to be involved in the song-writing process, Pierre and Chuck also wanted to change the way they wrote songs. Instead of focusing way too much on writing only hit songs, which has previously put a lot of pressure on the song-writing duo, they decided to write as many songs as they could and later choose the best of them for the final record. This approach turned out to work out perfectly for the two song-writers, who managed to write over 70 songs in a year – the most they have ever written for a single album.

After having worked with Brian Howes as a song-writer, Pierre and Chuck found his style of work very similar to theirs, and having liked other albums he’s previously produced (e.g. Hedley, Boys Like Girls…), they knew he was the right guy to approach when it came to finding the producer of their fourth record.

The band entered the studio in July 2010 – firstly as a pre-production in the Planet Studios in Montreal, where they recorded the first drum and guitars tracks and later on moved to Vancouver, to Brian Howes’ own studios – the Van Howes Studios, where they recorded most of the record.

During the recording process in the summer of 2010, the band also did some touring, namely the Bamboozle Roadshow in the U.S., where they decided to perform one of their new songs – You Suck At Love – live for the first time. The Bamboozle Roadshow was also where the members of Simple Plan befriended the band All Time Low. After showing the band’s lead singer, Alex Gaskarth the song ‘Freaking Me Out’, Alex declared his love for this song and immediately wanted to sing on the song as well. This is how one of the first collaborations on the record came up.

Besides Alex Gaskarth, Get Your Heart On! also featured three more guest appearances. Rivers Cuomo from Weezer, who appears on the song ‘Can’t Keep My Hands Off You’, which he also co-wrote, was a dream come true to the members of Simple Plan, as he was a long-time musical hero of theirs. Another collaborator on the record turned out to be the Canadian-Somali rapper K’Naan, on who’s rendition of the song ‘Waving Flag’ Pierre collaborated on earlier that year. K’Naan was chosen to lend his vocals to the original version of ‘Summer Paradise’ before Sean Paul‘s version was created.

And for the first time ever, Simple Plan also decided to incorporate the French language into their music. The band realized that over the years, they have already managed to establish themselves as a band that performs their songs in English, which meant that they could now finally experiment with their native language. The first song that got a French treatment was Jet Lag, which was recorded in both English and French – with two female singers – Natasha Bedingfield and Marie-Mai. Another song which later got the ‘French treatment’ was Summer Paradise.

Besides known singers, Simple Plan also used the help of their fans on this album. After they turned to them on Twitter when writing the lyrics of what turned out to be the song ‘This Song Saved My Life’, they invited around 30 fans to their studio to record group vocals to this song as well.

Around the time of the recording sessions for Get Your Heart On!, a number of demo versions, which were created during the previous songwriting sessions, leaked online, revealing songs like ‘Famous For Nothing’, ‘Try’ and ‘Just Around The Corner’. None of these songs eventually made it onto the actual record, however ‘Try’ and ‘Just Around The Corner’ were later released on the follow-up EP ‘Get Your Heart On: The Second Coming!’ (2013), which featured seven songs, all created in the GYHO songwriting process.

‘Can’t Keep My Hands Off You’ was chosen to be released as a buzz single or single zero, as the very first full song, which the fans could listen to from this album. It was also released to promote the Disney movie ‘Prom’, in which it was featured. The first official single from the record was Jet Lag, which was released in both English and French versions at the same time. To promote the release of the single, the band set up a special interactive section on their website called ‘Jet Lag Airlines’, which revealed a special content each day [often with some delays, to keep it in the airlines spirit]. After Jet Lag, the band released ‘Astronaut’ as the second single, and ‘Summer Paradise’ as the third and final official single of the record (which has since become one of Simple Plan’s most popular songs of their career). Besides these songs, a music video was also created for ‘This Song Saved My Life’, which came to full circe with another involvement of Simple Plan’s fans.