Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We've made a lot of party music; we're definitely not Thom Yorke. But there's also depth to our records; we get emotional.
We want to give kids something to hope for. If one kid says, "Your cd helped get me through this year," that's all it takes.
Maryland is such a special place, man... You miss that warm, friendly love. It ain't like that everywhere else in the world.
I prefer a good review. A bad review that dismisses us... I take it with a grain of salt. I go, 'Okay, they didn't even try.'
You don't know how a song is gonna do; you don't know where it's gonna live. You know if it feels real, if it feels authentic.
To write a song and have it embraced by someone, even one person, I don't think that's something that everyone gets to experience.
As hopeful as I am, there are some times in my life when I get to low points. Luckily, I still have music to get me through things.
Start enjoying the things you like about yourself, and if there are things you want to change, either get to work on it or get over it.
I think Good Charlotte has definitely always been for the underdogs and the misfits. We haven't ever really been the critics' darlings.
I think what defines our band is really that, you know, we're just living our dream and making records that we love and having a good time.
It really is draining: when you sing a song, it means so much to you, and every time you sing it, you feel it ,and these emotions come back.
Good Charlotte, for us, comes from a place of youth for us, back when we were struggling and fighting for every inch, just trying to get by.
I got a little tattoo on my face, I'll never be able to work another real job so I consider that to be kinda forcing myself to stick to music.
I got a little tattoo on my face. I'll never be able to work another real job, so I consider that to be kinda forcing myself to stick to music.
Good Charlotte's the first band we've ever been in, and back then, critics didn't matter. There were no rules. There was no one we had to impress.
There are so many bands I am starting to see: Waterparks, Potty Mouth - they're all garage bands that started in the garage. Kids are loving them.
I read all the reviews. I remember the first review I ever read about our band was, 'They'll be gone tomorrow; they'll be gone quicker than they came.'
The whole time you're bouncing ideas off each other, you continue to try and push the songs as far as you can take them and make them the best that they can be.
We didn't leave home until we graduated high school, but when we did, we genuinely left. We went out into the world with 50 bucks, backpacks, and acoustic guitars.
The least punk thing I ever did was open a money market account. Blue chip stocks. Mutual funds. They're a very safe and dependable way to grow your money long-term.
When we were babies, mum had to dress one of us in one colour, like blue and green, and she'd put a little mark on our hand or toe... she definitely had to sort us out.
I think we live in a time where we can all distract ourselves from facing the pain or the reality of all of our lives - tons of ways to hide, to kill pain, to deal with pain.
I need a little criticism while I make a record so that I kind of feel like: okay, I know that I'm doing the best that I can do because someone is actually here challenging it.
It's important for artists to value themselves - whatever that means. Everyone's going to take that in a different way. If you don't value yourself, you will be bought and sold.
I feel like, if you're writing the same songs you were writing when you were 17 in your 30s, something's wrong. As a grown man, you're more confident, and you have less to prove.
There's an interesting thing I've seen with Australian bands: when you put them side-by-side with bands from other parts of the world, they're just more musical. They're just better.
It does feel really good when you play a new song, and it's the loudest singalong of the night. It means just as much when we're playing the old songs, and people are singing along to those, too.
I think it's a known fact that Joel and I have always loved Australia since we started coming here 13 or 14 years ago. Everyone knows we love it here. Our only concern is will we wear our welcome out?
I kind of live by this old thing that time will tell whether people are going to write about this or that; all we can do is be who we are and make records we love, and everything else will sort itself out.
I think about people whose lives maybe hadn't turned out as well as me and Joel's lives, and I just think it's just pure luck and the grace of God. I also think we were lucky to have each other as brothers.
There's this wave of new pop-punk bands that has come out that's bigger than ever. I'm really glad that we got to be a part of helping push that forward, if we did at all. I wouldn't have had it any other way.
We were all 16 and 17. When you're that age, you're just daydreaming all day. We had bands we loved - Green Day, Weezer, a lot of bands in the '90s - and we just wanted to have fun. We didn't overthink it too much.
I really love 'Cold Song.' If anyone really listens to that song and thinks about their life, there's a lot of good material deep down in there. I think if you listen to the lyrics, it may take you on some sort of a journey.
I didn't even write the lyrics down. I got in the booth, I put down a little guitar riff and the idea I had was it was going to be really simple, I just want it to be all about the lyrics and I just literally sang the lyrics.
One of the most harmful things in the music industry is 'record-by-committee,' where 10 people from the label gather around, and they make you write a 100 songs and decide which one's a hit. That takes the inspiration out of it.
As a kid, you're like, 'Do they have Preakness everywhere or just in Maryland?' You hear people talking about it, and it was like, 'Oh, everyone goes there to hang out and party.' I didn't even know it was a race until I got older.
Hopefully, the people that would look at a Good Charlotte record and dismiss it for maybe what they think is a certain kind of content, if they do discover something meaningful, then it's a nice surprise. I like those kinds of contradictions.
Things have changed. I almost feel like it's more adaptable, and you can decide your own career now. I feel artists have so much more of a voice and so much more power now. It's really inspiring to see how a lot of the young artists use their platforms.
In music industry they always want you to write something like the one that was popular. And that's something you kind of have to just - sometimes you just say yes to people, like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure," and then you just write the one you want to write.
We were kids that didn't have any education. None of our parents were in the music business or even college graduates. We didn't have someone guiding us. We were just uneducated kids from the middle of nowhere that suddenly had a band going around the world.
I wouldn't be surprised if this album cycle for 'Cardiology' is the funnest couple years we ever see. We've made all of our mistakes; we've kind of learned. Now we know what to avoid, we know what to embrace, we know how to take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.
Today, somewhere in America, there's a kid who's got a laptop and a guitar and a couple of his friends he's putting together to play drums and bass, who's gonna change the way we say things, the way that we dress, the way we view things, the music we hear, everything.
We grew up in the middle of nowhere. We didn't have a rich uncle in the music industry or some contact through someone that our dad worked with. And we went into the world blindly, and just through believing, dreaming, and working hard, Good Charlotte came to fruition.
'Life Changes' is a song that we feel really connects to the spirit of our band and our fans. It's got that positive vibe we always want to put out there, and the message - no matter how many times you get knocked down, always get back up - will forever be part of the GC story.
The guy who runs Big Day Out doesn't like us for some reason; I don't even know why. We do all the other festivals, and we enquired about it. Who knows, maybe he'll eventually crack, but maybe not. We're just going to keep knocking on his door late at night saying, 'Come on, dude!'
It's hard to talk about childhood trauma. It's hard to talk about depression. It's hard to talk about anxiety. And we thought - I wonder if we just open up our subconscious and the things that we think about and hide from people every day and just let them come out in some of these lyrics.
Often people think they know what they want, but what they really want is something that's genuine. So they'll be saying, "Do another one like that," but you liked that one because it's real. So as long as I keep it real and I do something that's real to me, you're going to feel it in the same way.
I've started to see records as just a snapshot, a portrait of where you were at at that time. And if you're comfortable with that, sometimes it's like an old high school year book picture - it makes you blush a little bit, but you gotta learn to really appreciate each stage of your life and where you're at.
I think that 'Prayers' is a really interesting one because we wrote it well before the border crisis was happening, and in that first verse, I was actually writing about the experience of me and my wife's relationship and finding someone who you feel safe with and you relate to and can ponder existence with.
You're just these kids from a small town. You get a record deal, and everything just goes so fast. In the span of five albums... in a way, the band that you started in your bedroom, or your basement or your garage, kind of becomes not your band anymore. It becomes something bigger than you could have known. No one really prepares you.