Busted frontman Matt Willis has admitted that he covertly sneaked on the band’s dedicated MySpace site in order to check out what fans were saying about the band.
The Year 3000 trio recently surprised fans throughout the country by announcing a special reunion tour that would include reworks of some of their best singles 20 years after they initially came together.
Busted formed in 2000 and rose to the top of the charts, selling millions of albums and won two Brit Awards before breaking up in 2005.
In the years afterwards, they’ve rejoined to record new songs and pursue separate careers, with Charlie Simpson recently being awarded The Masked Singer UK champion as Rhino.
Matt, Charlie, and James Bourne sat on the sofa in the ITV studio on Tuesday to discuss with co-hosts Alison Hammond and Holly Willoughby about how the music industry has evolved since they first started out.
‘The thing that has changed massively is the industry,’ Holly said. ‘The music industry is unrecognisable. You were sort of the last wave to come through before everything went sort of streaming and all that sort of stuff. Does that feel different?’
After all three musicians agreed that the music industry does feel different, Matt recounted how, when they initially started their careers, MySpace didn’t even exist, having begun in 2003.
‘There wasn’t even MySpace when we were around. I remember MySpace happened just after Busted, going, “What’s this?” We used to have a forum that we used to go in.’
Charlie chimed in to add: ‘We had our own forum. We had a rubbish forum.’
Matt then admitted: ‘I used to go in and pretend to be other people and see what they were saying. So yeah, it’s a completely different world, but it’s also brilliant.
‘The music industry is completely unrecognisable to what it was, but it’s still thriving. It’s still a really cool industry. They’re embracing it.’
Charlie admitted that he ‘misses’ having ‘tangible stuff’ such as people buying CDs.
‘I am glad that we caught the tail end of that golden era though, people buying CDs. Because I feel like there was tangible stuff back then, which I miss, personally,’ he stated.
‘We got nothing now,’ Alison remarked, as he then responded: ‘No. Just an iPhone.’
The band recently discussed rocking out in the aughts, recalling how they felt like ‘outsiders’ in compared to their contemporaries.
‘We took influence, obviously, from bands like Green Day and bands we grew up loving. But there were kids who hadn’t heard that type of music before and we were the introduction. And a lot of kids went on to become much heavier music fans. A lot of fans I meet are like, “Oh I ended up being a fan of like, Meshuggah but I started with Busted.” It was like Busted was the weed, the gateway drug! I’m still shocked by it,’ Charlie shared.
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV.