But we all felt like we had something to say.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was it like to make a Good Charlotte album again?
JOEL MADDEN:Everybody was on the same page.
Credit: Justin Coit
We all agreed that we all felt passionate about it.
We went in the studio and it happened really fast.
This is probably the best record we made in a long time.
You said you didnt want to make a record unless you had something to say.
What did you have to say?
Good Charlotte was always something that we needed.
It was the product of our environment and our experiences as young kids.
Good Charlotte was something that we created so that we could belong to something.
We just needed some hope.
Good Charlotte had to grow up in front of everyone because we started so young.
We came from a situation where we didnt have a great education.
We were low income and we were from a small place.
How didworking with younger artists like 5 Seconds of Summerimpact your desire to make new music?
With Good Charlotte, there was always a simplicity to the music.
We were never musical geniuses.
We were always very honest about our musicality.
Thats what Good Charlotte always was.
We didnt have musical backgrounds in our families.
We didnt have music lessons.
We never claimed to be anything other than guys who were trying to make music.
So theres an honesty to it.
Its not very pretentious.
Some songs on this album Life Changes, 40 oz.
Dream, Life Cant Get Much Better feel really nostalgic.
You talk about how grand and life-affirming individual moments can be.
Were you looking back while making this album?
As you become a parent you do become nostalgic, but you question the future for your kids.
What is my footprint on the world?
What am I contributing?
Thats what we did over the last five years.
We left the band.
We shut it down.
We chilled everything and said, Lets take a look at who we are in the world.
We have to be more than this.
Its very selfish to think, Im going to put out records, tour, and make money.
We were pretty off in our intentions in the beginning.
Pop-punk is having a moment.
5 Seconds of Summer had a massive album last year, Blink-182 put out an album earlier this month.
Good Charlotte were one of the first groups to make the genre crossover into the mainstream.
What do you think about the state of pop-punk in terms of where its gone from where you started?
I love the genre.
It gets dismissed by music critics, but pop-punk is such an important genre.
Good Charlotte has become something thats like our baby.
The rest of the work I do, thats what I do when I go to work every day.
We have a studio Los Angeles where bands make records and we work in all kinds of ways.
Thats all because of this genre of pop-punk that a lot of people dont take very seriously.
