McFly were hard to miss back in the mid-noughties. They were everywhere. I must have seen them at least 150 times when I was sat eating my breakfast as a kid, jumping around on TV with their crazy hair and open mouths. An excitable young lot to say the least. Now look at them, all grown up with tattoos, shorter hair but still with the same sense of childlike naivety and worriless devotion to life that they always had. Our joyful and cartoon-like band have gotten old and they make me feel even older.

With this aside, I think it is only fair to recognise some of their new songs as being more mature too and in places even really good. Yes, I said it. Really good. McFly are an important band. We need them. They need us. For a few hours I forgot who I was watching and I was more struck aside with the air of a real band playing real songs. Perhaps I was fooled, I mean, I am pretty sure they still don’t write or produce their own music. And so what!

Their gig was engulfed in showers of screams which were good enough to penetrate not only my body but my trusty ear plugs and I was nearly blown up twice with their flames and confetti blasting machines. A tighter show than you have ever seen before and cameras which projected screaming girls onto the screens made the Brighton Centre feel like Wembley. They loved it. Would I see them again? No probably not, but it was nice to know they were real and it was nice to know they cared. It can’t go on forever though.

Words and Photos by Matthew Hodson
www.matthewhodsonphotography.co.uk