Like a good debate team or any skilled politician, sometimes people have to defend positions they don’t really believe in. In this case, the position is the new 5 Seconds of Summer (5SOS) record, Sounds Good, Feels Good, is a strong album absolutely worthy of listeners’ precious time.

A little more than a year removed from releasing their billboard-topping, gold-certified self-titled debut album and less than a year from their equally successful live album, LiveSOS, the blokes from Sydney, Australia, are back with the highly anticipated Sounds Good, Feels Good.

As a college-aged male, tweeny boy band jams generally don’t make it onto my playlist. Naturally, boy bands (a label which 5SOS refutes) aren’t created or marketed for people like me. It would be far too easy to write a list of missteps in taste and style with Sounds Good, Feels Good. So instead, here’s a list of reasons why I believe the mates of 5SOS have made a record that deserves a listen.

• 5SOS shows how studied they are in their genre. For real, this album at times sounds like a carbon copy of the bands and type of music that have influenced 5SOS. Instrumentation and vocal effect on certain songs make them sound like unreleased Blink-182, Green Day and Good Charlotte tracks. While this could serve as a critique, it’s legitimately impressive how they can emulate these bands so accurately.
• Serious songwriting beef. Speaking of Good Charlotte, frontmen Benji and Joel Madden are credited as writers on five songs. Good Charlotte’s longtime producer John Feldmann, who has also worked with The Used, All Time Low and Panic! At the Disco, produces this album. Heavy songwriting from The Monsters and the Strangerz (the team behind hits from Maroon 5, Jason Derulo and others) bolsters the songwriting muscle displayed on Sounds Good.
• They understand “the struggle” and encourage you to break free of societal restrictions. “Hey Everybody!” shows the members’ understanding by providing a sympathetic description of people who are just getting by. They then bust out in a call-to-action chorus: “Hey everybody, we don’t have to live this way / We can all get some, we can all get paid.” While they don’t offer any specific proposals as to how everybody can “get some” and “get paid,” we know they at least understand the struggle — even if they haven’t lived it. 
• 5SOS is budding punk heroes. 5SOS displays their punk chops with anti-convention and self-afflictive lyrics, like “I say nine-to-9 is overrated,” “They can’t make me a believer / I know I’m an underachiever” and “Right now you’re just another number / Get out, the system’s in the gutter.” I mean, would you expect band members who sport green hair, a Nirvana t-shirt and a double rock-on gesture all in the same photo to be about that nine-to-five life? These guys are the embodiment of the punk ethos.
• Sounds Good, Feels Good is a true team effort. Each 5SOS member carries his weight on this album. Michael Clifford, Luke Hemmings, Calum Hood and Ashton Irwin, in true boy band fashion, all split vocals. While they don’t have radically different voices, they each bring something to the table vocally. And according to the songwriting credits, they all split the writing duties fairly equally.
• Sounds Good, Feels Good has a lot of songs that are actually, dare I say, pretty good. Seriously, pick any of the first four songs: “Money,” “She’s Kinda Hot,” “Hey Everybody!” or “Permanent Vacation.” Listen to it all the way through and try to say it doesn’t light up something in your cold, cynical heart. These are pop songs, which are engineered to sound pleasant. There’s nothing groundbreaking on this album, but there are a lot of well-made, well-executed — though simple and unoriginal — songs on this album that are pretty enjoyable.