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Busted singer Charlie Simpson has admitted that some of the lyrics to the band’s older songs are “icky” – but has ruled out updating them to reflect modern sensibilities.
Simpson performs in the Essex-formed rock trio alongside James Bourne and Matt Willis.
In recent years, some of Busted’s early songs have faced damning reappraisals from listeners, with tracks such as “What I Go To School For” and “Air Hostess” being deemed “creepy” on social media.
“What I Go To School For” is written from the perspective of a teenage boy lusting after a 33-year-old schoolteacher, and features lyrics such as: “I drop a pencil on the floor, she bends down and shows me more.”
Wrote one fan on X/Twitter: “The song ‘What I Go To School For’ by Busted and accompanying video is actually incredibly creepy in retrospect isn’t it?”
“Air Hostess”, meanwhile, is a lascivious ode to ogling a female flight attendant, and describes the singer “messing [his] pants”.
Many of the disputed lyrics were penned when the trio were still teenagers themselves, with the band having formed when they were 16 years old.
“Some of the lyrical content of those songs we just wouldn’t write now, so there’s definitely that kind of [icky] feeling,” Simpson told Metro.co.uk. “But they’re so well known by our audience that it doesn’t really matter.
“It’s not like we’re coming out with a new song that sounds like those old songs, or lyrics that sound like those. It captures a moment in time so we can just play them on and on.”
Busted recently re-recorded many of their biggest hits for a new compilation album, Greatest Hits 2.0 – but left the lyrical content almost entirely intact.
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He continued: “It was a different time. We went back into the studio and recorded our hits for the Greatest Hits album, which went to No 1 in November [of last year]. All the songs have had a fresh makeover, if you like, as we’re thirties and forties and we made them when we were 16 years old.
“We definitely feel fresher and I actually prefer all of the new versions, so it’s really cool to be able to play them live.”
However, the band did agree to one small lyrical tweak in order to detoxify “What I Go To School For.
“We changed the teacher’s age in ‘What I Go To School For’ to 53 instead of 33,” Simpson said. “We didn’t want to change them too much, that’s what people want to hear, it’s what they remember, but making the teacher older was a joke change… otherwise, the teacher would be younger than us now!”
