Busted came close to breaking up again after clashing over their new album 'Half Way There'.

Busted

Busted

The pop punk stars - James Bourne, Matt Willis and Charlie Simpson - had various disagreements over what direction they should take on the record after switching up their sound on their comeback LP 'Night Driver'.

In an interview with The Sun newspaper, Charlie - who reunited with his bandmates in 2015, after quitting in 2005, leading to their disbandment - confessed: "This album was quite a difficult album to write.

"To be honest we nearly broke up again."

However, they ended up having a "lightbulb moment" when they realised they simply needed to make a Busted-sounding record.

Matt explained: "There were points where we were really butting heads and it was becoming quite stressful because we weren't together on what we wanted to do.

"We all had different ideas and we all wanted to pursue different avenues and we didn't really know what the Busted sound was today."

After coming up with the track 'Nineties', everything else started to fall into place.

Charlie said: "We wrote that song and we were like, OK, we can do this. Let's make a Busted album, but Busted in 2018."

Matt said: "Once we knew we just had to make a Busted record it was a lightbulb moment and it spurred this level of creativity between us.

"We just wrote the whole album in a month then we went to record it really quickly."

The 'Year 3000' hitmakers also admitted that not feeling pressured to make a hit album awarded them the freedom to do whatever they wanted.

Charlie said: "Nowadays we don't have people telling us what we can or can't do, we make our own decisions.

"Busted wrote great songs, but the elements of production and the way it was marketed, it was all very young, which we can't moan about because it made us a huge band.

"Back then, we fitted a certain mould. It was great to make this record and not give a s**t about any of that."

'Half Way There' - which they worked on with Foo Fighters producer Gil Norton - is released on February 1.

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