The Michael Clifford you got to know in the multi-platinum Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer has grown up on his solo debut, Sidequest. A husband and a father now, Clifford tackles all that comes with those responsibilities – the love of being a dad, the vulnerability, the questions and more.
The result is an honest, but musically playful look at the good, bad and scary of growing up. I spoke with Clifford at length about the album, finding his own voice as a solo artist and much more.
Steve Batin: I wanted to get your perception on this. I’ve talked about this with so many artists. As soon as you have a kid, it doesn’t matter what happened in your life before that. None of it matters because you realize it’s just all about them; protecting them, making them happy and most important what they think about you.
Michael Clifford: Dude, it really changed my whole outlook. Also, there’s something interesting that I’ve found, once you have a kid, I’m like, “Man, everything else is easy. I can do anything because being a parent is the hardest and most fulfilling thing that you can do.” So, it is definitely interesting because anything else can come my way. And I’m like, “Yeah, it just pales in comparison to the emotion and feeling of a kid.”
Baltin: Yeah, Serj Tankian is a friend, and he put it to me this way: as soon as you have a kid, everything you’ve ever thought you’ve known about being in love forget it because it all changes. You’ll never love anything as much as you love your kid.
Clifford: You also have to rest in peace the old version of you that you had before you were a parent, which is super interesting to me and coincidentally falls in line with this album that I’ve made. I made a lot of the music before being a dad and then after being a dad I had to go back and re-approach everything again. Not because I wanted to make a record about being a dad, there’s maybe one song that is about that on my album. But I wanted to just approach it with a new perspective of where I was at in life now and it’s a totally different place than where I was and it helped me embrace something more childlike in myself that I feel like I’ve been trying to force myself to grow up or something. It almost did the opposite to me, it’s doing the most adult thing that I could ever do in my life I was like, “Wait a second, that’s my place for that, but everything else, like in music, I need it to be just as fun and full of that childlike wonder as I can tap into.”
03:08
Baltin: James Bay was also saying he made his last album before he had a kid. And then he went back and realized that there was stuff in there about being a dad. He didn’t know he had written about it. A lot of times as an artist, because music is so subconscious, you’re writing about things you’re thinking without knowing they’re there. So, it’s interesting that you say that because I love your vulnerability on the record. When you listen now do you think the idea of being a dad was part of that?
Clifford: Absolutely, I think I am a chronic overthinker. I overthink everything in my life, especially music and parenting. I’ll dissect every moment and everything to see if I’ve done it right. So, for me, there was a ton of correlation with both of those things. And they’re the two things that are the biggest parts of my life. So, yeah, a common theme in my album and just honestly, who I am as a person is can I even do this thing that I’m trying to do And other people give me confidence and make me think that I can, but maybe I just have to give it a go and with the song like “Cool,” it was the first song that I that I said, “Okay, this one is done and this one I can hand over and let out into the universe.” That was just such a trip because I’ve been delivering songs and signing off on songs in the band since I was 15, 16 years old. And now here I am. I’ve been doing this for 13, 14 years. And I’m struggling to even be happy with the music and feel like it’s ready to be put out into the world. So, in a lot of ways, for me, this record had to go at some point. I had to let it go and have other people tell me when the thing needs to be done by, because if it was up to me, I’d just keep editing it and it’d live in a Dropbox forever.
Batin: When you’re with the band, you have other guys that you can bounce ideas and songs off of. When it’s in your name, it’s a whole different kind of pressure.
Clifford: I was getting to the point where every single sound and every song I was just overthinking. There was so much where I didn’t understand the concept of everything that I put out and everything that everyone hears. I was like, “I no longer can hide behind my friends. It’s me now. And everything that you hear on it has to be a representation of me and that just riffled me.” That was a big journey for me, finding out sometimes you just have to go with your gut and go with what feels right instead of what analytically in your head you can do. I was just running in circles
Baltin: When you go back and listen to it now are there songs that surprise you? What Luke [Hemmings] said to me that was so interesting when we talked about his EP last year, he talked about the fact that in writing it, it was almost like coming to grips with his teenage feelings and it was like trying to protect someone that you can’t protect anymore. You spent all this time as a teenager having success and you craft this image for the world. And then now as an adult, you’re a dad, a husband, and there’s a freedom in letting all that go and saying this is who I really am. I no longer have to protect that image.
Clifford: That’s interesting. That’s well said for him. And I think that’s been a theme for him, even when we made our fifth record, I was feeling that there was like a lot of reminiscing from Luke on the past and he was trying to find the right words to say, and I love how he put that. That was a great quote. I think going into being solo artists for all of us in the band we have this thing that we all do together. Then when we go and do our own things they’re so different. And they’re so uniquely us in whatever way. For me, I was just trying to find what’s that for me? I don’t know what that looks like for me. I don’t know what that sounds like, or what words are right and represent me. Finding out that was I think the biggest part for me because ultimately, I’m not the person who sings the most in my band and I had to find out what’s my voice in in this space of life. Who am I? I think finding that for me was a big theme in my record.
Baltin: Who was it that you found in this?
Clifford: I have no idea and what I love about what I’ve made is the songs are all so different and they’re coming from so many different places and like ideas that I feel like this is part of who I am. I’m complicated and have a lot of parts of myself and I’m not necessarily one person. I’m a sum of all my experiences and all of these different journeys that I’ve taken in life.
Baltin: Was there one moment that really meant a lot to you in finishing this record?
Clifford: For me, having Porter Robinson, who’s my number one favorite artist of all time, listen to “Kill Me For Always” and do his thing on it and believe in me, really helped me get across the finish line. His co-sign meant a lot to me.