McFly explain the real meaning behind upbeat tracks on their new album Young Dumb Thrills: "We weren't quite ready to address things"

McFly's Harry Judd and Danny Jones have opened up about the real meanings behind some of the seemingly positive tracks on their new album Young Dumb Thrills.

Discussing their comeback album with host Jess Izsatt on last night (Nov. 18)'s The Record Club, the pair shed light on the upbeat songs with a more personal message that feature on the record, which hint at some of the difficulties they went through both as a group and individually over the last few years. It was only recently that the full story came to the surface in ITV documentary special McFly: All About Us.

"We weren't quite ready to address things," Harry explained. "We were back and it was a really positive time, and I think we wanted to move on from some of the stuff we'd been through over the past couple of years. We weren't ready to tell our story, and it wasn't until last month when we recorded that documentary that we all felt comfortable telling our fans and [being] willing to put that on a prime time show.

"[On] our next album we'd like to explore maybe some of the darker elements of friendship and feelings."

Danny explained that some of those darker elements are already portrayed in a few songs on the album but are masked by up-tempo production - including Growing Up (ft. Mark Hoppus), Head Up, and Sink or Sing - and now they've addressed their trials publicly, the band are more likely to be "a bit braver" in in the next album:

"There's nothing worse than liking a song and not knowing what it's about - now [the fans] know us and where it comes from, and why we write these songs, it feels like we've got more of a licence to do that now."

Elsewhere in the interview, Harry and Danny went into the new creative process on the album and how their brilliant collaboration with rock royalty Mark Hoppus came about - and why Dougie jumping up and down (!) was the key to polishing the final version.

MORE: Catch up on previous episodes of The Record Club

Young Dumb Thrills is on course to debut in this week's Official Albums Chart Top 3, potentially becoming McFly's sixth Top 10 album. See how the band fare this Friday from 5.45pm, or listen live to the Official Chart Show with Scott Mills from 4pm on Friday, November 20.

The Record Club in association with Bowers & Wilkins is a series brought to you by Official Charts, Record Store Day UK and National Album Day, which takes place every other Wednesday at 6.30pm BST.