With its cheeky lyrics and playground punk attitude, Busted's self-titled debut album charmed the ankle socks off us. But what can we expect from the lads' follow-up? A new, more mature sound? Don't bet on it! POPWORLD joined Charlie, Mattie and James in the studio..

Your debut album, Busted, was largely all about your experiences at school. Will the follow-up reflect pop stardom?
James: We'd just finished school at the time of that first album. But the new one's only being written two years down the line, so we're not gonna suddenly be all mature.
Mattie: Yeah. We're still very immature, so it'll probably be silly Busted stuff. I don't think we'll focus too much on pop star life; we'll just keep on doing what we're doing.
Charlie: I think what's happened to us in this last year might affect our writing. The only thing is, no one will be able to relate to it. The great thing about the first album is that everyone could relate to it. Only a minority of the population have been through what we've been through in the last year.
Mattie: On the first album, we brought things back from when we were at school - always wanting to get laid, that sort of mentality - but I don't know whether or not we'll keep that.

Now no one will believe you're not getting laid..
Mattie: Well, you never know. Our fans might, 'cos that'll keep them hopeful.
James: Maybe we'll write a song about what we'd have liked to have done with fans but haven't had the chance! No, we don't sleep with out fans [laughs], trust me.

So you're saying you haven't had a lot of girls in the last year?
Charlie: Yeah, I haven't had a lot of girls. I've had the opportunity to have a lot of girls, but I'm not gonna sleep with just anything that comes near me. But, erm, y'know, you do get the opportunity a lot, which is quite funny.

James, we received an e-mail from a fan who claimed she'd snogged you at a TV studio..
James: That's nonsense. There's actually gonna be a song on the album about people - girls - that talk b******s. You get a lot of people like that, making up stuff.

Now you're pop stars yourselves, will you still write songs about other stars such as Britney?
Charlie: Yep, I think we might do a 'Britney Two'. If I met her, I'd say, Please sleep with me. She'd probably just slap me, but at least I'd have had her hand on my face!
James: We had to do a song about Britney because she is probably one of the fittest girls ever. I think she's amazing. It's not like I'm just obsessed with the way she looks; I like her music too. 'Baby One More Time' is wicked. Her songs are how pop music should be.

OK, so you still love Britney, but you don't still have crushes on teachers, do you?
Charlie: No! I never did in the first place. That was Matt: he's a freak!

Do you have a special process for writing lyrics?
Charlie: No. We might just be in a hotel room one night, think something's funny and decide to write about it.
Mattie: It'll be different every time. A song can come out of anywhere: it can come from a bassline or a guitar melody.
James: We don't sit there and write 33.3% each. It doesn't matter who writes the most, 'cos we're a band. It's a three-way project.

Who comes up with most of the ideas?
Charlie: I come up with a lot of riff-based ideas. James comes up with more melodies and Matt comes up with ideas for lyrics.

Who's playing what on the album?
Charlie: I'm doing the drums and the guitars.. basically, we play all the instruments. It's a very collaborative thing.
Mattie: Charlie and James fight over who's going to do which lead part on the guitar. But it's easy for me, 'cos I just stick my basslines down and that's me done. Charlie is incredible: the geezer can play drums like you wouldn't believe. He makes beats sound incredible 'cos he uses his foot more than his hands.

What has inspired you recently?
Mattie: I've been listening to a lot of acoustic music, and Blink [182] are bringing out a new album this year. I was such a massive Blink fan for years, and they haven't done anything for ages, so I'm looking forward to getting back into them. That's who me and James were listening to at the time we wrote the first album, along with New Found Glory, and that's what we grabbed a big influence from with our sound. We still love that stuff, so we're not gonna stray from it. We're not gonna turn heavy metal or anything.
James: I've been listening to [quirky Canadian band] Barenaked Ladies and Michael Jackson quite a lot. Even though our songs sound nothing like him, he inspires me.
Charlie: I love a lot of punk music. I love people that do their own thing and are different to what's out there already.
James: Our inspiration has got to be teen movies, seriously!

Do you still live together?
Charlie: Actually, I'm living with my brother now. It got to the point where it was like living and breathing work. It was cool living with them, but it's really nice now to go to work and do your thing, then go home and chill out for a bit.

You're often referred to as a boy band. Does that bother you?
James: No, not at all, 'cos we write the songs, we sing the songs, we play the instruments, and if that's not credible enough, then f*** off. If someone wants to call us s***, they don't know us, and I don't feel they can know enough about the band. It's not like we claim to be a rock band: we know we're a pop band and we write pop music.
Charlie: I don't have a problem with boy bands. I think *NSYNC are amazing. But I do have a problem with the crap that comes out of these reality TV programmes. They're all nice people, but the music.. I love stuff that excites me. Justin Timberlake is really good, so is Avril Lavigne, and, to a certain extent, Daniel Bedingfield does some interesting stuff.

Talking of Daniel Bedingfield, he says he feels most comfortable recording in his underpants. Do you have any weird studio habits?
Charlie: He's a freak show! What a piece of bulls***! He just wants to get you to think that. That'd be a sight, wouldn't it? I bet he wears Y-fronts. I'd like to see Britney singing in her pants, or maybe J.Lo or Tara Reid..
Mattie: In his pants? That makes me wanna listen to it even more! Didn't he record his album in his bedroom? See, that's OK. We don't do anything like that. Charlie's funny though: when he records his vocals, he'll be standing there in a beanie hat with his arm going up and down. He turns into some kind of rapper! It comes out of nowhere, 'cos he's the poshest guy I've ever met in my life and suddenly he turns into Eminem!
James: I do stupid stuff when I'm singing down the mic. I think I've got a guitar in my hand when I haven't, so I play air guitar.
Charlie: And there's this thing called the 'talkback' where you can press a button and talk to others while they're recording. So you can p*** around and distract them. Every time they sing, you just go, C**k, c**k!

Who hits the most bum notes?
Charlie: James is quite experimental sometimes: he goes off on one on this falsetto journey and it sounds a bit weird. It's wicked when he gets it right, but sometimes he goes off on a bit of a tangent.
James: We've got a lot better. Now a lot of our vocals are done in one take.

You write your own songs. Does that mean you've made a lot of money?
Charlie: Hopefully! We'll soon see when the royalties start coming in. Every song was written by us, so we should make a bit of cash.
Mattie: All I'll say is, you've got to write your own songs, people. You don't know how much of a difference it makes. I don't know how bands without songwriting credits earn any money. It must take them ages; you have to wait until arena tours and stuff like that. I'm thinking, Christ, all you have to do is write the songs and you get loaded so much easier.

Are you living your dream?
James: Yeah, definitely! We're completely living our dream, man. Not long ago I was bunking trains with Matt, now everywhere we go it's, like, private planes. From bunking trains to private planes - it's mad!

Finally, back to the second album.. will you be keeping the Busted image we know and love: the blazers, the jumps and the face-pulling?
Charlie: Yeah, definitely, man; that's us. I just wear blazers; I always used to wear blazers at school. I loved school: going round to girls' houses, getting my first girlfriend.. Our image thing, that's just us. When we got signed, we said we didn't want to have an image put on us, and they were fine with that. Our image would only change if we changed.
Mattie: The face-pulling thing started to annoy me after a while, though. I didn't realise I did it that much until I looked at TV performances and every five seconds I'm pulling a stupid face. My mum would phone me up and go, 'Are you ever going to do anything nice, Matt? I only ever see you with a stupid face on.'