It's always been about the songs for us. It doesn't matter about all the image stuff. We're really about making songs that people can relate to, that we love, that they will love, that we will enjoy playing live.

I think the big thing for Simple Plan is that we were able to keep the band members, the same five guys, the same lineup from the start. That's not easy. We grew up together. We're friends. We come from the same world. We've always had the same dreams and goals. I think we realized, as the years go by, how precious it is to have that, to build that, to see so many bands break up... it makes us realize how different we are to all that. We're really proud of that.

We grew up with all the Fat Wreck Records and all the Epitaph bands, that era. We mixed it up together. We were never purists of being just pop or just pop-punk. We always wanted to blend everything that we love.

Simple Plan`s trademark is pretty easy. By the time the song ends, you can sing it. It doesn't take 20 listens. It's hard to write those songs but we try our best.

We've always had a lot of different influences and we've always liked catchy music from the Beatles to Cheap Trick to Elvis Costello.

Sometimes you just have to sit down a lot and make sure everyone's cool. If someone has an issue, you make sure they don't keep it inside. That's been the model of the Simple Plan.

It's always been about the songs for us. It doesn't matter about all the image stuff. We're really about making songs that people can relate to, that we love, that they will love, that we will enjoy playing live.