London's McFly emerged during the 2000s in the shadow of Busted's breakthrough, captivating audiences through their youthful appeal and energetic pop-punk songs. While Busted aligned with the accessible punk style of blink-182 and Simple Plan, McFly drew greater inspiration from the Beach Boys. Their 2004 debut, Room on the Third Floor, debuted atop the U.K. Albums Chart and yielded the hits "Five Colours in Her Hair," "Obviously," and "That Girl." The 2005 follow-up Wonderland also claimed the top spot, earning the group the BRIT Award for Best Pop Act. Subsequent releases maintained their commercial momentum, with 2006's Motion in the Ocean, 2008's Radio:Active, and 2010's Above the Noise all reaching the U.K. Top 20. In 2014 the combined McFly and Busted supergroup issued the self-titled McBusted. After a greatest-hits tour and accompanying live recording, McFly resurfaced with Young Dumb Thrills, which peaked at number two on the U.K. Albums Chart. Their seventh studio effort, the rock-driven, power-pop-infused Power to Play, appeared in 2023.
The story began in 2001 when singer/guitarist Tom Fletcher auditioned for Busted yet ultimately joined the act's songwriting collective instead. There he encountered singer/guitarist Danny Jones, and the pair soon started writing together. By 2003 the lineup was complete with the addition of bassist/vocalist Dougie Poynter and drummer Harry Judd. Taking their name from Michael J. Fox's Back to the Future character, McFly issued Room on the Third Floor on Universal in autumn 2004; it entered the U.K. chart at number one, securing the band a Guinness World Record as the youngest act to achieve that feat. The album also produced several Top Five singles, among them "Five Colours in Her Hair," "Obviously," "That Girl," and the title track, with the first two reaching number one.
McFly opened 2005 by receiving the Best Pop Award at the BRITs, then issued the charity single "All About You" backed by a cover of Carole King's "You've Got a Friend." Proceeds supported African communities impacted by HIV/AIDS, prompting an early-year visit to villages in Uganda. Wonderland followed in August 2005 and again topped the U.K. Albums Chart; the Wonderland Tour 2005 DVD, captured in Manchester, arrived that autumn. The members next portrayed themselves in the spring 2006 Lindsay Lohan film Just My Luck, with a U.S. collection titled Just My Luck released in May that drew material from prior albums. Motion in the Ocean landed that fall at number six; one single, "Please, Please," sparked tabloid speculation that band members other than Judd had written it about his rumored on-set romance with Lohan.
In 2007 the compilation All the Greatest Hits gathered earlier U.K. successes and introduced fresh material such as "The Heart Never Lies." The next year the group traveled to Australia to record their fourth album, Radio:Active, which they self-released on their Super label after departing Island Records; it first appeared via a promotion with The Mail on Sunday before a wider retail launch that included a deluxe edition. McFly rejoined Island in 2010 for Above the Noise, collaborating with producers Dallas Austin and Taio Cruz on several tracks. Shifting from earlier adolescent pop-punk toward stronger pop leanings, the album featured lead single "Party Girl." Poynter won I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in 2011, and Judd claimed victory on Strictly Come Dancing later that year. A second anthology, Memory Lane: The Best of McFly, surfaced in 2012 and spotlighted U.K. number ones including "All About You," "Five Colours in Her Hair," and "Transylvania."
Extracurricular ventures continued in 2013 when McFly joined forces with Busted to form the supergroup McBusted. The expanded lineup toured and released the 2014 album McBusted, though the project ended once former Busted member Charlie Simpson rejoined his original band. McFly staged a sold-out greatest-hits tour in 2016 followed by a live album. Early 2019 brought news of their musical return, after which they issued the unreleased-demos collection The Lost Songs. Their first studio album in a decade, Young Dumb Thrills, arrived in 2020 with the singles "Happiness" and "Growing Up" and reached number two in the U.K. Three years later they unveiled Power to Play, their seventh studio set, which reaffirmed their pop-punk origins on tracks such as "Where Did All the Guitars Go?" and "God of Rock & Roll."
