Alex Gaskarth is celebrating 20 years with his band, All Time Low, with the release of The Forever Sessions, Vol. 1, featuring re-recorded versions of some of their biggest hits. The rocker sat down with Billboard‘s Rania Aniftos to discuss the inspiration behind the project.
“That was honestly one of the hardest parts was focusing on which songs encapsulated the early days of this band the most,” he shared of choosing the songs to be on the album. “I think we knew that we wanted to start with our early records […] We wanted to key in on the ones that we felt like to this day carried a major weight with our fans and our audience. There are still songs from those records that are in every setlist we put together. It’s kind of wild to be playing music 20 years later, and these songs are still so important to the fans.”
As for why the band has been so close all these years, Gaskarth explains that it comes down to friendship. “It’s so wild to me, because when we started this band, we had no aspirations of it lasting this long,” he shared, before adding, “It comes down to the way we started the band, where we were friends first and we were enjoying ourselves. The aspirations of the band never went beyond what the ties of the friendship meant to us.”
He concluded, “When you’ve been at it for as long as we have, they’re always so fresh because you play them so often live. Feeling that connection with the audience makes those songs feel new again.”
Watch Billboard‘s full interview with All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth above.
