INTERVIEW
Will Macnab | 01/04/2025
Michael Clifford has never been one to chase the spotlight for himself. For over a decade, he's been a driving force behind 5 Seconds of Summer, the Australian band that skyrocketed from YouTube covers to international fame. As the band's lead guitarist, Clifford has helped shape their sound, writing and producing alongside his bandmates, but he's never had to stand front and centre—until now.
For the first time, he's stepping out on his own, preparing to release his debut solo single, 'cool'. But if you ask him, he didn't devise a grand plan to go solo. There was no lightbulb moment of realisation. Instead, it happened gradually, as he collected songs over the years—some written long before he became a father, others shaped by the life change that came with welcoming his daughter.
When we connect for our conversation, Clifford multitasks, something any new parent would understand. "Excuse that I'm eating right now," he laughs. "It's one of those mornings. I have to eat when I can."
After years of hesitation, self-doubt, and artistic exploration, he's finally ready to share his voice with the world. Having only created as part of a collective, Clifford admits that stepping out alone felt daunting. "I wanted to create something unique to me, and it had to have my identity in it, but I wasn't entirely sure what that even was," he says. "I had the comfort or the safety blanket of being part of a group; I didn't represent the art; it's a collective of four of us. Even now, I don't know if I've completely figured it out."
Being in a band like 5SOS meant everything—lyrics, melodies, performances—was a shared experience. The spotlight was evenly distributed, and Clifford never needed to claim more. "I didn't think people even knew what my voice sounds like," he says with a slight chuckle. "There's not a great repertoire of my vocals out there... I think it's hard to find room because we have four amazing singers and there's only so much space. So, taking this leap, knowing that people would hear every part of my voice and every influence in my music, was daunting. The biggest challenge that kept stopping me was that I wanted to make sure that people who knew me or resonated with any part of me were proud of what I was making. That was the part that stopped me; I was like, "Man, are people even going to like this?" Hopefully, in the future, I can look back on this and say, "Wow, good job"—and not, "You knew it".
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Still, despite the nerves, he recognised that this was something he needed to do—not just for himself but for the songs he had been holding onto for years. "Some of these songs are old," he admits. "It's a range of songs that, like, I've been working on for probably too long, that I think it's good for me to hand them over into the universe and let everyone else hear what I've been working on."
His debut single, 'cool', reflects the internal conflict that has often held him back—the battle between perfectionism and self-doubt. "It's about the inner conflict I often feel, especially when it comes to perfectionism and insecurity," he explains. "I find myself constantly questioning whether what I'm creating represents me in a way that others will find 'cool'. "It's this relentless cycle of overthinking."
"The music video is about that perfectionist feeling from deciding whether the camera should be far or close to adjusting lighting to changing angles. I kept doubting every detail, not feeling satisfied with anything. It was so ironic, as 'cool' was the first song I was able to sign off on and release in the world. While working on it, I kept thinking, "This doesn't sound cool enough," but that was the song's point. And once I put something out, and it's there, I can no longer touch it, and it just has to live exactly in that way forever; that was terrifying to me. So, the message of the song made sense. That was the first one that I was like, Go with the feeling and be okay with it."
A considerable part of Clifford's transformation over the past year has been fatherhood. Becoming a dad, he says, has shifted his entire perspective—not just on life but on the way he approaches music. "Watching this human who I love discover things for the first time—finding such beauty in the smallest things, like playing with a paper towel for 15 minutes—made me realise how jaded I was in those little things," he says.
This newfound appreciation for life's simple joys influenced his music—not necessarily in a direct way, but in the way he wanted it to feel. I wanted to reapproach my music, not from a place of wanting it to be about being a parent," he explains. But I did want to embrace that sense of discovery, of experiencing something fresh. I wanted the songs to feel like they were being discovered for the first time."
Fatherhood has also made him reevaluate his legacy. "Before, I never really thought about being a role model," he admits. "I've sort of moved into a stereotypical dad role pretty quickly after becoming a parent; there's sort of more of a desire to help and show other people that."
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Throughout his career, Clifford has been open about his mental health journey. He's never shied away from talking about anxiety and depression, but he acknowledges that the conversation around these issues has changed dramatically in recent years.
"It's fucking wild to see how many more people are talking about mental health now," he reflects. "When I first came into my adulthood and moved into the music industry, you'd never hear about anything like that. And it's a strange reality. Has the conversation shifted, or has something exposed us all more, like, to this thing? I don't know. It's just cool to see that mental health is not like a "dirty word" anymore."
For him, mental health is an ongoing process—something that ebbs and flows, rather than something that's ever entirely 'fixed'. "It's never linear," he says. "It comes in waves, and it disappears, and it evolves into different things we must work on. For me, I'm lucky to be incredibly self-aware. I can tell when I'm not being the type of person that I want to be."
Being in the public eye only amplifies those struggles. With social media, there's a constant stream of opinions, some uplifting, others destructive. "Obviously, things online will get to me—it's just like, what do you do with that information? Every hurtful thing that I read is going to affect my psyche in some way," he admits. "I think that it's still all self-made goals and things that we think we should be doing and letting go of a bit. Not letting other feelings or other people's opinions dictate yours. It's what I do with that afterwards that matters. Am I going to let that destroy me, or am I going to be able to tell myself the things that I need to tell myself in order to move through it?"
At the end of the day, he's found a way to centre himself—his family. "I can read a thousand words online that could hurt me, but at the end of the day, the three-foot human taking a nap in the next room is the thing that matters," he says. "That's what's important."
With his first solo release imminent, Clifford is preparing for another major milestone—touring alone for the first time. "I think it's going to feel weird to not be on the right-hand side of the stage," he laughs. "I still think I'm going to shift over there out of habit."
Despite the nerves, he's excited about the opportunity to connect with fans in a new way. "My whole thesis behind this is relating to people," he says. "I want people to hear these songs and feel like, 'I get this. I see myself in this.' That's what music is about."
While his bandmates remain his brothers, this chapter is about self-exploration. And for the first time, Michael Clifford isn't waiting for the 'perfect' moment—he's just going for it. "And what I love about a lot of the stuff on this is I'm not trying to make music to do anything other than just have fun and be free."
Photography Kevin Sikorski
Styling Veta Adrion @vetaadrion
Grooming Tanya Alian @tanyamakeupandhair
HATC Alice Gee @alicesgee
Photography assistant Carianne Older @cariannneolder
Set Design Jesus Alvarado @jesuss_xcii
Styling asissted by Jessica Graber @jessicaonfilm
Words – Will Macnab
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