As rock-band relaunches go, Good Charlotte’s was conspicuously ritzy.
In April 2023, the pop-punk group identified for snotty if smiley Y2K-era hits like “The Anthem” and “Life of the Wealthy and Well-known” — “I’d wish to see them spend every week / Livin’ life out on the road,” goes a lyric within the latter — performed its first gig in 4 years not at a membership or a competition however because the musical leisure at a marriage at Lodge Du Cap-Eden-Roc within the sun-kissed south of France. The bride and groom: Sofia Richie, the mannequin and influencer whose father is Lionel Richie, and Elliot Grainge, the document govt son of Common Music Group Chairman Lucian Grainge.
“Sofia Richie has raised the bar for movie star weddings,” Folks journal proclaimed of the ceremony, which Vogue described because the yr’s “royal wedding ceremony” and which led Elle to anoint Richie’s “quiet luxurious wedding ceremony hair” because the “magnificence second that dominated 2023.”
Reflecting on her nuptials, Richie — whose older sister Nicole has been married to Good Charlotte frontman Joel Madden since 2010 — downplays the glitz and glamour. “Our wedding ceremony didn’t look small, however it was actually about household,” she tells The Occasions. With that in thoughts, Good Charlotte was a “no-brainer,” she says. “I knew they have been gonna play all of the vibes, and the room simply erupted. Each single particular person was singing each single phrase. It was electrical.”
Reckons Madden, who fashioned Good Charlotte along with his twin brother Benji when the 2 have been highschool children in suburban Maryland: “Simply one of many prime 10 biggest nights of my life.”
Two years later, the Maddens, each 46, have parlayed the night into a brand new comeback album, “Motel Du Cap,” and once more it’s a household affair: Good Charlotte’s first LP since 2018, the album got here out final week by way of Atlantic Data, which 31-year-old Grainge took over as chief govt in October. Richie, 26, says her husband and Joel Madden aren’t simply brothers-in-law however “legit finest associates”; Grainge himself says he and the Maddens play the online game “Fortnite” for an hour each Saturday. (“We go on our headphones, we glance so uncool,” the exec advised the commerce journal Hits.)
“We have been at peace with most likely not making one other document,” Joel says on a latest morning on the Burbank headquarters of the brothers’ firm MDDN, which encompasses a expertise administration enterprise, the livestreaming platform Veeps and digital media manufacturers together with Various Press and Brooklyn Vegan.
Closely tattooed and likewise dressed in black and white, Benji sits in a recording studio subsequent to his brother. “I believe we’d have made one other,” he counters. “However we’d meandered away from the band in so many alternative ways in which perhaps it will have been one other three, 4, 5 years.”
Regardless of the case, Good Charlotte had gone kind of dormant within the wake of the twins’ father’s loss of life simply months after the discharge of 2018’s “Era Rx.” “Our band was born out of a time once we hated our dad,” Benji says of the dad or mum who abandoned his household when the brothers have been about 13. “First couple data, you possibly can hear all about it.” But they’d reconnected extra just lately with their father, which left them feeling conflicted about digging into his failings in track after he died.
“It sort of f— us up a bit bit,” Joel says. So as a substitute of recording or touring, the Maddens focused on their varied different endeavors — not less than till Richie requested the band to get again collectively.
For Joel, the reply was a straightforward sure. “That is my little sister — I’ve been in her life since she was seven years outdated,” he says of Richie. “Nicole and I took her to Selena Gomez live shows and took her to Disneyland.” (For her half, Sofia Richie says, “I completely idolized Joel.”)
Having bought their bandmates on the thought — Good Charlotte is rounded out by guitarist Billy Martin, bassist Paul Thomas and drummer Dean Butterworth — Joel and Benji led the group via a single rehearsal after they’d arrived on the French Riviera, which evidently was all they wanted. Video clips of the band’s rowdy efficiency went viral on-line, together with one through which Benji’s spouse, the actor Cameron Diaz, may be seen bouncing within the crowd.
“We’re all sitting round afterward, and Elliot was like, ‘You guys have to make a brand new document,’ ” Benji remembers. “We’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ ” He turns to his brother. “Then later that night time, you stated, ‘I believe I may make a document.’ “
“I felt a bit fireplace,” Joel says with a smile.
Good Charlotte’s return is propitiously timed given the broader emo and pop-punk revival that’s ushered different turn-of-the-millennium acts like Blink-182 and My Chemical Romance into stadiums over the previous few years. Six months after the Richie-Grainge wedding ceremony, Good Charlotte performed the annual When We Have been Younger competition in Las Vegas alongside Inexperienced Day, the Offspring and Sum 41; this previous April, the Maddens even turned up at Stagecoach to carry out with nation star Luke Combs, who referred to as himself a “big, big, big fan” as he introduced them to the stage.
Joel Madden, from left, Elliot Grainge, Nicole Richie and Sofia Richie in Los Angeles in 2023.
(Michael Buckner / Selection by way of Getty Pictures)
But the brothers describe their ambitions lately with a modesty distinct from the early 2000s. “If there was a podium, we’re like in third place — perhaps an honorable point out,” Benji says. “We’re good with that.” The way in which he and Joel see it, Good Charlotte now not sits on the middle of their lives, nor ought to it.
“Some folks will sacrifice all the things for artwork,” says Joel, who, like his brother, has a son and a daughter. “I’m not sacrificing my relationship with my children for artwork. I’m gonna make the perfect document I could make proper now, and I’m nonetheless gonna make bedtime.”
“Motel Du Cap” displays that mindset in songs about household and devotion equivalent to “Deserve You” and “Fortress within the Sand,” through which Joel imagines the sound of his kids taking part in down the corridor. “I wouldn’t say it’s dad rock or married-guy rock, however it sort of is,” the frontman admits with amusing.
It’s additionally rich-guy rock, in fact. “Within the night, we simply order Matsuhisa,” Joel sings in “Stepper,” referring to the sushi joint on La Cienega, “And you understand we at all times get the champagne.” He laughs once more. “I perceive what it appears like,” he says of a track that makes use of blistering guitars to color an image of moneyed consolation. “It’s ironic.”
Provides Benji: “Hasn’t our band at all times been a bit ironic, although?”
Certainly, the Maddens discovered a sure frisson from the get-go in writing about their rough-and-tumble upbringing with a squeaky-clean pop aptitude. Punk purists scoffed whereas “TRL” viewers made a gold vendor of Good Charlotte’s self-titled 2000 debut; 2002’s “The Younger and the Hopeless” went triple-platinum and landed the band on the quilt of Rolling Stone. (A framed copy hangs on a wall at MDDN in Burbank.) The brothers moved to L.A. from Maryland round 2003 and purchased homes close to one another in Glendale.
“We have been actually shut associates with the Recreation,” Joel says of the Compton-born rapper, “and he advised me, ‘The second a home comes up on the market in your road, I need to get it.’ ” In the future Joel noticed an indication go up and promptly referred to as his pal. “He actually got here within the entrance door, walked round for one second and stated, ‘I’ll take it.’ All of us lived on that very same road for 3 or 4 years.”
For “Motel Du Cap,” Good Charlotte recorded within the room we’re sitting in as we speak with producers Jordan Fish and Zakk Cervini, each of whom are signed to MDDN. (Among the many firm’s different purchasers are Unhealthy Omens, Poppy and, uh, Nicole Richie’s hip-hop alter ego, Nikki Contemporary.) The music nonetheless places catchy vocal hooks over chunky guitar fuzz, although the LP additionally features a laid-back rap-rock collab with Wiz Khalifa and a fairly credible nation tune within the wistful “Deserve You.”
“There was loads of nation music the place we grew up,” says Benji, who mentions that “there’s a bit little bit of lore” round the concept that Combs and the brothers may be associated. “Our dad’s final title was Combs,” he says. “We took our mother’s title once we have been 18 — went right down to the courthouse as a result of we have been offended. However his household was from North Carolina, and so is Luke. We’ve type of loosely linked our grandfathers.”
Joel Madden, left, and Benji Madden at MDDN headquarters in Burbank.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
As youngsters, Benji continues, “I believe we have been like, ‘F— nation music — we’re gonna do pop-punk.’ However as we’ve gotten older, you hear a track and also you go, ‘Hmm, that’s good.’ ” In truth, Luke Combs has been Benji’s most-listened-to artist on Spotify the final three years in a row.
“Look,” he says, holding out his telephone to show it. “Yearly I ship this to him.” Behind Combs on the tally are Idina Menzel and Hugh Jackman — “I’ve received a 5-year-old,” he explains of the singers from “Depraved” and “The Biggest Showman” — adopted by Chet Baker(!) and Good Charlotte.
Twenty-five years after their first album, each brothers are comfy — psyched, even — to seek out their band in such an unlikely combine. “The place Good Charlotte’s at now, we will positively play any rock competition, but additionally your entire household can come to our present,” Joel says.
“That’s one of many issues I’m happiest about,” Benji provides, “is that we’re not making an attempt to relive one thing that we have been at 22.”
