Simple Plan live at Theater of the Clouds, August 10th, 2025
On Sunday, August 10, 2025, Simple Plan proved it was never a phase when they filled Theater of the Clouds for their sold out Portland show on their 25th anniversary “Bigger Than You Think” tour. For one night, attendees were transported back in time to the era of music on Myspace and Saturday morning cartoons. Simple Plan kicked off their set with the catchy anthem from 2002 “I’d Do Anything” and then went into “Nothing Changes” from their soundtrack to the band’s recently released documentary, The Kids In The Crowd. The song alludes to their 25 year career thus far and perfectly encapsulates the ethos of the tour in its lyrics: “25 summers doesn’t feel so long; a thousand miles away, but we’re right where we belong”. This night they were, in fact, much more than a thousand miles from home — Portland, Ore. is almost 3,000 miles from Simple Plan’s hometown of Montreal, Canada. Yet still almost 3,000 miles away, the band were right where they belonged. Singing that they “grew up on stages,” the band corroborated this with the ease in which they conquered the stage.
The band, quite literally, jumped into their third song, “Jump”, from the 2004 album Still Not Getting Any…, and got the crowd of over 6,000 on their feet. They followed “Jump” with “Addicted”, the classic pop punk hit from their debut 2002 album No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls before bringing out LØLØ, one of Simple Plan’s supporting acts for the tour, for “Jet Lag”. Overall, the 19 song setlist for Simple Plan’s 25th anniversary included all of the hits throughout the years and managed to fit snippets of more hits in with two medleys, combining “The Worst Day Ever”, “My Alien”, “God Must Hate Me”, “Grow Up”, and “Vacation” into one song performance and later “Crazy”, “Perfect World”, “Save You” and “This Song Saved My Life” as part of their encore.
Vocalist and bassist Pierre Bouvier invited fans to the stage who dressed up for their song “What’s New Scooby Doo?” and was joined by fans in Scooby costumes dancing around him for the well-known cartoon theme song. Scooby Doos could later be seen crowd surfing during “Where I Belong”, the song Simple Plan wrote with State Champs, the final song before the band returned for their encore. At the end of the evening, Simple Plan had the crowd of “just kids” from different generations singing “I’m Just A Kid” before crying their eyes out to “Perfect”, the song written for every kid that feels like they didn’t live up to their parents’ expectations.
In keeping with the pop punk bands famous for their cartoon theme songs theme, Bowling For Soup precluded Simple Plan’s performance and of course, included their cartoon theme song in their performance, “Today Is Gonna Be A Great Day” from the late 2000s cartoon Phineas & Ferb. And regardless of their familiarity with Bowling For Soup’s music, the majority of the crowd knew the lyrics and sang along to the Disney Channel cartoon theme song from their childhood.
Bowling For Soup also brought the kid-like energy that primed the crowd well for Simple Plan’s performance, with vocalist and guitarist Jaret Reddick and bassist Rob Felicetti cracking jokes with one another and playfully bantering on stage. Reddick joked during the show “This is the second show of the tour and so far it’s in the top two,” but then went on to add “Actually you’re top cause there’s so many of you,” alluding to the Portland show being sold out. Felicetti’s stage antics included playing the bass between his bandmate’s legs and making faces at the crowd.
3OH!3 brought out their signature immaturity as well and transported us all back to a time in our lives when we snuck into shows with fake IDs and were still downloading music from Limewire. I still think “tell your boyfriend if he says he’s got beef that I’m a vegetarian and I ain’t fucking scared of him” is one of the best lines of all time — and getting to chant it with a crowd of over 6,000 was a satisfying feeling. What makes 3OH!3 stand out from the rest of the late 2000s electropop artists is how unapologetic they are about their political incorrectness. If any other band were to write similar lyrics in the year 2025, it probably wouldn’t fly, but 3OH!3’s earlier music was a product of its time, yet somehow it has remained timeless. The band comprised their setlist with a majority of throwbacks from their breakthrough sophomore album Want and the follow-up to that, 2010’s Streets Of Gold. And no matter how long it’d been since we last listened to 3OH!3, the audience still knew every lyric.
LØLØ was the fresher face of the line-up, opening the evening for the more established artists, but brought a similar pop punk energy, though more femme-coded, as the headliner. The singer-songwriter has enjoyed recent success after the release of her debut album last year, falling for robots & wishing I was one. From that album she opened her set with “faceplant” and followed with “2 of us” before going into her new single “the devil wears converse”, a catchy and relatable anthem poking fun at the singers “type” and the stereotype of males in the pop punk scene.
