Pierre Bouvier is in his feelings—and they’re wearing Vans.
The Simple Plan frontman is calling in to talk about Harder Than It Looks, the band’s first album in six years, and he’s already got his dog in the room, a light flickering above him like a lo-fi therapy session. “It’s kind of a fun, emotional roller coaster,” he says of the record. It is. And as promised, it sounds like Simple Plan being very Simple Plan. Which is kind of the point.
“We went through that thing where you think, maybe we should reinvent ourselves,” Pierre says. “And then you realize—wait, people like us because we’re Simple Plan.” Turns out, when you're 20+ years in, reinvention isn’t always growth. Sometimes it’s just denial.
So this one’s for the lifers. It's got all the skate park confessionals and arena-shouted heartbreaks, but it’s also self-aware enough to put a breakup anthem like “Ruin My Life” in the same breath as Instagram comment drama. “It’s about online hate,” Pierre says. “It’s about scrolling and getting sucked into the one negative comment and letting it ruin your day.” Then he adds: “I use the delete button a lot.”
Still, they’re not just retreading No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls. “There are surprises,” he says. “Like 'Anxiety'—that started over guitar chords, and I was like, this is boring. Then we gave it this reggae flavor, kind of like a modern 21 Pilots thing.” Simple Plan: now with 15% more island groove and no prescription required.
And yeah, he’s still romantic—sort of. He says his wife wouldn’t call him that, but songs like “Slow Motion” and “Million Pictures of You” say otherwise. “She walks into the room and it’s like slow motion,” he says, swooning slightly. “It’s amazing that can still happen after years.”
Of course, the years have added up. Bouvier’s been married 17, the band’s been together for over 20, and the tour with Sum 41 is being billed as a “20-year anniversary” victory lap. Pierre’s not pretending to be 22 anymore. “I’m 40,” he says. “I’m not front row. I’m mid-to-back now.”
They’ll be playing songs from their 2002 debut, which Pierre now calls “cringe-worthy”—not with shame, but with affection. “I’ve learned to embrace those things. The vocals, the delivery, whatever. It sold three million records. People like it.”
As for genre purity? That’s a bygone war. “We used to get crap for doing Disney movies,” he says, referring to their surreal cameo in 2004’s New York Minute—the final Mary-Kate and Ashley movie. “Some purists thought it was lame. But we got to be ourselves in front of a new audience. We didn’t have to act. We just played our song. And now people bring Vacation signs to our shows.”
What’s more punk than doing the uncool thing before it becomes cool again?
So no, Harder Than It Looks didn’t get to be the perfectly timed 20th-anniversary record. “It was finished before the pandemic,” he says. “It’s been sitting around for years.” But somehow it still hits like it was meant to soundtrack your teenage breakdown and your midlife reevaluation. Maybe both.
“Success used to be seen as selling out,” Pierre says, thinking about Dookie, TikTok, and Travis Barker’s chokehold on the genre. “Now people just like what they like. And that’s awesome.”
Which means maybe pop punk didn’t get more mature—maybe we just stopped being ashamed of feeling things loudly. Simple Plan never had that problem.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
