Two quotes finest sum up Good Charlotte as they launch their first album in seven years, Motel Du Cap. One comes from the anthemic closing monitor, “GC FOREVER,” which features a spoken-word outro: “Now, I’m actually happy with Good Charlotte. Simply what we stand for, what we stood for, and all of the issues that we did as actually younger guys, little to no steering aside from our personal,” says one of many Madden brothers, Joel and/or Benji. “You look again at your self as a child now that you simply’re an grownup and simply go, ‘Yeah, we did alright.’”
The second is delivered with a form of twin telepathy unison as Benji and Joel converse to Consequence simply days earlier than the report drops: “If on the finish of all of it, once we’re outdated males, the one factor you wanna speak about is that I had successful tune… That’s my worst nightmare, that my music defines me after I’m an outdated man,” says Benji. “No, thanks.”
“No, thanks,” echoes Joel.
“Don’t even put that on my gravestone,” Benji emphasizes.
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Because the brothers method the twenty fifth anniversary of their band’s self-titled debut, they’re coming into “the second act for Good Charlotte.” It’s a part marked by a inventive mindset nearer to album No. 1 than 2018’s Era RX, and an outlook achieved by the hard-fought realization that they’re excess of simply the music. As excited as they’re to be reactivating Good Charlotte, the choice to make their eighth LP wasn’t, as Benji places it, “a calculated transfer” a lot as an instinctual need born from their first gig in 5 years — as a marriage band.
In 2023, Joel was requested by Sofia Richie Grainge, his sister-in-law by his marriage to Nicole Richie, if Good Charlotte would play at her marriage ceremony to music exec Elliot Grainge. The couple had lengthy expressed love for the band, and the request from the “little sister” that he’d identified since she was seven “meant lots” to Joel. “I known as everybody personally and requested, ‘Hey, it is a particular, actually significant factor to me. Will you fly? I don’t wanna telephone it in. I don’t need it to be a pretend gig. I need it to be an actual gig…. We haven’t performed in 5 years, however I wanna make it nice,’” he recollects. He was “touched” when everybody agreed to reform for the particular night time. There was no paycheck; the one incentive was to hang around and create a heartfelt reminiscence. “The setting was proper, as a result of everybody was there on their very own account and so they have been all there with actual pure intentions.”
The present was “fucking nice,” and the band began joking about recording a brand new album “tomorrow.” It rapidly turned extra severe. “Benji is like, ‘If we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it for actual,’” says Joel. “So all people’s gotta take into consideration that as a result of it’s a dedication. If we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna put all of it into the report and we’re gonna exit on tour, which is what all people is up towards with youngsters and wives, and shit we care about greater than touring.”
This intentionality hadn’t all the time been Good Charlotte’s modus operandi. Rising up in an surroundings marked by “generational trauma, generational poverty, generational dependancy,” as Joel describes it, fame and fortune appeared like salvation. “You suppose at a younger age, ‘That is the reply to my issues. I’m gonna get wealthy and well-known and I’m gonna get all of the issues that I believe I must be particular, to be essential, to be worthwhile.’”