Good Charlotte Hit
Walberto Kennedy
Joel and Benji Madden, the twin brothers that started the band together back in high school, spoke with NPR's Michel Martin about themes of the album, connecting with music's younger generations now and facing their demons together.
Michel Martin: Let me start by asking you about the name of the album, Generation Rx. I'm told, or at least I think I read, that this album actually started when you played at a memorial for rapper Lil Peep. Is that right?
Benji Madden: Yeah, Peep was a fan of the band, and we had gotten very friendly. We were really appreciative of the new sound that he was pushing. Overall, he was genuinely just a really sweet guy, and very creative. We thought what he was doing was really innovative. When he passed away, I think it was heartbreaking for everyone in the music community, any time you see such a young talent with so much potential. His mother had actually reached out and asked if we could try to do something special for the memorial. So we got together and tried to think of an idea of something that would be special for him, his family, his friends and his fans. And we came up with the idea of covering his song "Awful Things."
Perhaps it isn't clear to people, from what I just said, that Lil Peep died from an overdose. Can I ask about how you approached this? Did you approach this saying, "I want to say something about this," or how did it come about?
Joel Madden: It really started in a conversation with why. Where's the pain, where does it come from and why are we medicating. Outwardly, and at first glance, someone could say, "Oh, I'm just having a good time. This is just my drug of choice." But really what I feel, from my perspective, is they're suffering inside. They are dealing with some pain that they're not really aware of or addressing. But really where we were looking was just inside, from our own personal experience. Whereas, my pain, what haven't I been sharing.
Benji: To add to that, I think what we talked about as a band was, "Are we really honest and vulnerable with people?" Because sometimes that can be hard to do when you're stepping out and putting your feelings, thoughts and experiences out there publicly. We were asking ourselves if we had been brave enough in our career. When we went to make this record, we thought, 'What's the point for us to be here, if we're not going to be as honest as we can?'. And these are hard things to talk about. It's hard to talk about childhood trauma. It's hard to talk about depression. It's hard to talk about anxiety, or things like bipolar, borderline personalities or all the things that have been in and around people's lives that are uncomfortable for people to talk about. We thought, "I wonder if we just open up our subconscious and open up the things that we think about and hide from people everyday and just let them come out in some of these lyrics, what kind of record will we make?"
I'm going to be 40 next year. I'm married with two kids. I'm taking my kids to school and working. We're kind of were full-time adulting now, and I go, wow, "I wonder if the way that I feel inside sometimes," I wonder if there's other people my age, with families but still dealing with those things. But I do think that everyone still has that inner-child that needs to be heard sometimes.
Joel: I think, in the most honest way, of course. Obviously, we started as kids, and I think Good Charlotte is kind of synonymous with youthful ideas. I do think that we've questions where do we fit into music today. I think at some point we had to just accept that we don't know, and that our best foot forward is just to be honest and to make records that we like, that we're proud of.
Martin: I don't want to gloss over the fact that the two of you have been through a lot to get where you are. For people who may be just acquainted with your music now, and know you as a know famous band you know super hot band, but you've been through a lot. Your dad left you know when you were young and you kind of were really fighting the battle and you've been very open about that and I know Benji, you've been open about the fact that you had a struggle with alcohol earlier in your life. And now were in a moment, you mentioned it's not just little people but there's XXXTentacion who was who was murdered. But that that that you guys kind of came through and they didn't. And I wonder why you think it is that that you all survived circumstances that frankly defeated other people.
When Good Charlotte first broke out on the music scene in 2000, the twin brothers at the punk band's center, Joel and Benji Madden, sang all about the unrelatable woes and superficial values of celebrities in Hollywood in "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous."
Ahh yes, it would be such a clich and classic "sellout" tale if the Maddens, who turn 42 on March 11, weren't such supportive, loyal and private husbands, a far cry from the playboy personas they had more than 20 years ago.
Joel's first serious Hollywood romance was one that garnered a lot of attention, as it was with Disney Channel star Hilary Duff. The couple's eight-year age gap raised eyebrows, especially because the Lizzie McGuire starlet was just 16 when they first began dating, though they didn't publicly confirm their romance until later on.
Madden added, "[People] think I'm this crazy guy. I went to the ATM and this lady backed away, and Hilary asked me, 'What is it like when someone scoots away because they're scared?' I never notice it, she notices it for me."
In an interview with People, Joel made it clear the couple was pretty serious, telling the magazine, "I've found the perfect person. She's confident, she accepts me for my imperfections and she is good to me. I never have to question if she's going to be there, because I know she will be."
But after two and a half years together, with Joel co-producing songs on Hilary's Most Wanted album and the twin brothers making cameos in her film Material Girls, the pair split in November 2006, and it was a rather dramatic break-up as Joel began dating Nicole soon after.
The public split inspired several breakup tracks on Hilary's next album, a fact she didn't hide at all. "I had a pretty serious relationship at a young age that I ended, and it wrecked me for a good year and a half," Duff admitted to Cosmo in 2015.
"I was like, 'I get it. Like, I actually get it,'" she said, recalling the first time she fell in love. "It was so all encompassing. It was so intense. It was my life. It was like every minute of my day. It was pretty major."
Back in the mid-aughts, Joel blocked out the attention surrounding the sort-of love triangle, thanks to Hilary's popularity and Nicole's endless tabloid attention, thanks to her partying ways and time on The Simple Life opposite then-BFF Paris Hilton.
"I'm just a really normal, sensitive kind of go-about-my business everyday kinda guy," the singer said. "People see the tattoos, and they either read things or they see things and they don't really know that I'm just this guy that gets up and makes coffee in the morning and hangs out with his friends and walks his dog and reads his Bible and goes about his day."
And he was about to add "being a father" to his daily activities, as Nicole and Joel unexpectedly got pregnant after a few months together, with Nicole memorably confirming the news during a July 2007 interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer following her DUI arrest the previous December.
"They give me a reason to be OK with myself. I don't feel the need to try and prove to the world that I'm anything at all, other than who I am to them," he told The National in 2018. "When I was younger, I think I felt like I needed to constantly sell something. I needed that validation, and that's what my family gave me. It is the first time I've felt good enough."
The pair wouldn't get married until December 2010, with Joel later telling the Australian radio show Fifi & Jules, "People don't know this, but I asked her to marry me 10 times before she actually said yes. I was asking every other Tuesday."
"It was a Tuesday. I just woke up one morning and said, 'You know, we have two kids already,'" he said, "and I was just like, 'What am I doing? I'm a fool. Why haven't I asked her to marry me?' and did it that night."
"We met and we were partners from day one and from the second we found out we were going to be parents together, we looked at each other and we said, 'OK, both of our parents are divorced,'" the House of Harlow designer, 37, said on an episode of Where Are They Now? "'We both have had ups and downs with our parents and we don't really have a strong example of what a healthy family life is, but we're recognizing that now, so let's work at it and let's go through this together as a team.' It's been great."
"I would say that Joel is a very shy introvert, who loves life, who enjoys life, who loves music, has such a deep passion for music, and anybody who shares that same passion he will go above and beyond for," Nicole gushed to Australia's 60 Minutes. "He is a loyal person, who has the most incredible family values of anybody that I've ever met."
"The first thing I said when I first met my husband was, 'He's hot,'" Cameron recalled to Andy Cohen in 2016. "How come I didn't know this before? We had never been in the same circle." And it was super-serious super-fast for the couple, as they ended up getting married in a private ceremony in January 2015, six months after they first began dating, with Nicole and Cam's BFF Drew Barrymore serving as bridesmaids.
The news surprised many, especially given Benji's previous dating history. While Joel really had only been in the headlines for his two major relationships, his twin brother had a bit more of a playboy persona.
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