The answer, according to 5 Seconds of Summer, is that you don’t stop falling. You just learn to recognize the feeling. You name it. You write a song about it. And then, you fall upwards again, together.
The “falling upwards” motif appears literally: upside-down shots of the band walking on ceilings, floating in swimming pools, drifting through zero-gravity simulators. It’s a visual metaphor for the pandemic-era feeling of time slipping sideways. They are successful, yes, but they are also untethered. In an era of manufactured pop docs—polished, approved, and drained of friction— The Feeling of Falling Upwards feels radical because it’s uncomfortable. The band members cry on camera. They admit to resenting each other. They talk about wanting to quit. They laugh at their own younger selves with a tenderness that borders on grief. 5 Seconds of Summer - The Feeling of Falling Up...
The Feeling of Falling Upwards , a 50-minute documentary directed by the band’s own Michael Clifford alongside Andy DeLuca, is not a traditional "making of" feature. It’s a confessional booth. It’s a therapy session. It’s a scrapbook of anxiety, triumph, and the strange vertigo of achieving everything you dreamed of, only to realize you’re not sure who you are anymore. The title itself is a paradox. Falling upwards suggests a contradiction—a descent that looks like ascent. For 5SOS, that feeling is deeply familiar. The answer, according to 5 Seconds of Summer,
Since exploding onto the scene in 2014 as the punk-lite protégés of One Direction, the band has been in a perpetual state of “falling upwards.” They fell into stadiums. They fell into arenas. They fell into critical acclaim with the surprise 2020 album CALM . But with each upward swing came a gravitational pull: burnout, creative doubt, the erosion of private selfhood. You write a song about it
Released in September 2022, 5SOS5 was a record born from chaos. Written and recorded in the eye of the COVID-19 pandemic, the album found Luke Hemmings, Michael Clifford, Calum Hood, and Ashton Irwin scattered across the globe, separated from each other and the roar of the crowd for the first time in a decade. The result was their most mature, sonically diverse, and emotionally raw work to date. But to truly understand the album, you have to watch the film.