Year 2023 in the eyes of SimplePlan.cz

2023 is slowly coming to its end and what a year it was again! First year since the pandemic where we haven’t fortunately witnessed any show cancelations, which finally allowed Simple Plan to travel way more and way more often. Let’s have a look at the full year from start to finish and remind ourselves of all the happenings in the world of Simple Plan!

You can check out all the past reviews from 2009 later on over here – 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 – but right now, let’s go ahead, take a deep breath and have a look at all the major things that 2023 had in store for the band!

After resting at home for the first few months of the year, the guys were ready to finally hit the road big time in March, when they’ve finally returned to Southeast Asia with their first headlining tour for the new album Harder Than It Looks. This month also brought us the 21st anniversary since the release of SP’s first album No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls, which the band celebrated by re-releasing the album  on a beautiful crystal clear vinyl. At the end of March, we’ve then got to listen to Jeff Stinco’s special guest guitar appearance on a cover of ‘Waving Through A Window’ (a song from the Dear Evan Hansen musical) by Punk Rock Factory.

In April, Simple Plan were featured on Busted’s new album, collaborating on the song Loser Kid 2.0. For the summer, Simple Plan have returned to Europe to celebrate the festival season as well as to perform a few headlining shows. While in Europe, Simple Plan made a stop in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, where we welcomed them at the Rock For People festival for the first time and also filmed a little interview with them for SimplePlan.cz. In the interview we got Jeff and Chuck spill some beans about the Iconic/Jax collaboration that took place a bit later that year.

In the meantime, they’ve also managed to score the Rock Artist of the Year award at the 2023 CMW Jim Beam Indies Awards in June, making it the first award they’ve won as an independent band – congratulations, again! Upon returning from Europe, the guys didn’t stop and on the contrary headed to Florida for their favorite annual Walt Disney World stay, where they performed three shows for a few consecutive days at the Garden Rocks festival. And as per usual, they couldn’t miss out on returning back to their motherland, Canada, in July to perform for their Canadian fans at a number of local festivals.

The highlight of the summer of 2023 was a massive tour across the United States with The Offspring and Sum 41, which ran all the way until September. In October, Simple Plan released a new music video for the song ‘Iconic’ featuring a special guest – the singer Jax. In the same month, the band also headed to Mexico for a number of shows and ended the year with two iconic shows at the When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas.

2024 will be another super busy year for Simple Plan. They will cut their usual early year break short by heading to Europe for their first headlining tour since 2017 – the Hard As Rock tour with State Champs and Mayday Parade. As far as we know so far, this tour will include the band’s greatest hits but will also be focused on the bands latest album, as this is the first time they will get to fully promote it here in Europe as a headlining act. They will also be stopping in the Czech Republic and we are already planning another SimplePlan.cz interview!

As far as other touring plans goes, after returning from Europe mid February, the boys won’t rest for long, as they have a tour in South America in plans for March: they will finally return to Colombia as well as to a number of Brazilian cities. In April, the band will finally head out back down under, where they will be going on tour across Australia with We The Kings and Boys Like Girls. The plans the rest of the year then include another return for European festival season in the summer, mixed with some opening acts for Avril Lavigne, and also another performance at the When We Were Young in the U.S. in October.

But what about other music ventures for Simple Plan in 2024? According to an interview with Pierre, some members of the bands are already very eager to begin working on a new album. Pierre thinks that the creative process (songwriting/making demos) will definitely begin in 2024, but is unsure about when the album would be released. Besides that, Simple Plan also have some b-side songs up their sleeves that they might also release in the coming year to not keep their fans waiting for music for that long. But how will everything turn out? We shall all see in 2024!

As always, thanks for all the support in 2023, we can’t wait to bring you more Simple Plan news in the coming year!