Say What? 5 Seconds of Summer Compares Pete Wentz to Justin Bieber

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We're not sure Pete Wentz would be on-board with this.

5 Seconds of Summer is defending their place in the pop-punk world (they are definitely not a boy band, you guys) in their new cover story with Billboard magazine. Ashton Irwin tells the mag: "People get confused because we're young and have a female fanbase… But so did Fall Out Boy. Pete Wentz was the Justin Bieber of 2007. Girls loved him, they obsessed over him."

OK, we'll give him that one.

Not that 5SOS ("five sauce," as their devotees call them) hasn't drawn a Bieber comparison or two themselves. The article calls attention to the band's YouTube cover of Bieber and Chris Brown's "Next to You," in which Luke Hemmings "playfully" sports Bieber's then-trademark bangs.

If you can't wrap your head around a young female fan base being "punk," get this: Goldfinger's John Feldman, who produced 5 Seconds of Summer, tells Billboard that there's a fundamental change happening in the pop-punk demo.

"In the first wave of Green Day and Blink-182, [the crowd was] 98 percent dudes, with circle pits, stage diving and punk-rock sing-alongs, bro style," says Feldmann. "Now, I would say it's 80 percent girls."

Let's be honest, we all love Hayley Williams but girls are undeniably underrepresented in the genre. It's something that 5SOS would love to change, if they have their way. When it comes to Hi or Hey Records, the 5SOS imprint distributed by Capitol, Hemmings says that "A girl version of us would be cool."

But at the end of the day, he says, "If a kid picks up drumsticks because of our band, job done."

Of course there are many more juicy details about our favorite Aussies in the Billboard article, so click over to read the full story.

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