Good Charlotte
The Madden twins in eyeliner, sneering at celebrities while becoming celebrities — Good Charlotte's "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" and "The Anthem" were the sound of every mall, mixtape, and middle-school rebellion of 2003. Waldorf, Maryland's finest export.
Twin brothers Joel and Benji Madden formed Good Charlotte in Waldorf, Maryland, in 1995, with Paul Thomas on bass and, from 1998, Billy Martin on guitar. Their self-titled 2000 debut on Epic's Daylight label undersold badly enough that the band was nearly dropped — which makes what happened next one of pop-punk's better revenge stories.
The Young and the Hopeless, released October 1, 2002, turned Good Charlotte into the mall-punk mainstream's house band. "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" — a singalong sneer at celebrity privilege — blanketed radio and MTV, with "The Anthem" and "Girls & Boys" right behind it. The record went triple platinum in the US, selling over 3.5 million copies there and around 4.9 million worldwide, and the Madden twins' eyeliner-and-tattoos look became a template stocked in every Hot Topic. The follow-up, the darker The Chronicles of Life and Death (October 2004), debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 — their highest US chart position ever.
Their peak ran roughly 2002 to 2007, and by decade's end the band had drifted from the center of the culture even as the Maddens stayed famous. Good Charlotte announced a hiatus in September 2011 and returned in November 2015, settling into elder-statesman status for a genre their biggest album helped define. For anyone who was thirteen in 2003, the opening chant of "The Anthem" is still instant time travel.
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