Simple Plan frontman Pierre Bouvier is plenty pissed off at the media. Seems like everything he reads about his band is negative -- that they're nothing but a bunch of punk goofballs who only write songs about high school crushes and partying.

Nothing, he said, could be further from the truth.

"Bands like us and Good Charlotte and Sum 41 and Green Day are all kind of branching out and getting a bit more serious," he said. "With this record, we stepped it up. It's got variety ... people always write that all our songs are about girls. But there's 11 songs on our new record, and only three of them are about girls."

So he's understandably wary about the media's perception of the video for Simple Plan's new single, "Untitled," which takes a serious look at drunk driving -- something critics might construe as a desperate attempt to be taken seriously ([article id="1499524"]"Simple Plan Shoot Sober Video With Drunk-Driving Plot"[/article]).

"The song's about having a terrible tragedy happen your life and the way you recover from that. The media comes in, listens to one song, looks at the videos, and they make an assumption based on like five seconds," a defiant Bouvier said. "They want to make bands like ourselves or Sum 41 into fluffy pop-punk bands, and everybody who knows us knows we're just as serious as everybody else."

They're so serious about raising awareness about the issue of drunk driving that they invited Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the Los Angeles set of the "Untitled" video. Bouvier said Simple Plan will also be appearing in a series of public service announcements for MADD.

"A lot of people in my life have been affected by drunk driving. My uncle had a really bad accident and almost died when we was driving drunk," he said. "And a friend of my brother's went out partying and got into an accident while he had another passenger in the car. My brother's friend died and the guy in the passenger seat was paralyzed for life. It's all around us. Everybody has somebody they know who's been involved in some sort of drunk-driving accident."

After Simple Plan finish the shoot for "Untitled," they have a rare week off. But then it's right back into the grind -- first to Europe for a few weeks of publicity, and then back to the States to kick off their tour with the similarly serious Good Charlotte (see [article id="1499360"]"Good Charlotte Take Off The Hamburger Suits, Decry Human Suffering In New Clip"[/article]), which despite all the heady subtexts, Bouvier promises will still be a good time for all.

And while Bouvier said it's difficult for him to write new songs while on tour, there is new Simple Plan material on the horizon. Bouvier promises to keep on writing the same type of stuff the critics absolutely hate.

"I only write songs based on what I'd like to hear on the radio. I can't write something hoping that it will get good reviews," he laughed. "I stopped relying on the media a long time ago."