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Kevin writes...

Hey, why do you hate Good Charlotte so much? They're not my cup of tea either, but why all the hate?

-Kevin

First of all, just look at these assholes.

I mean seriously, do you really need any more of a reason to hate them than just looking at the faggots? They look like somebody spray-painted the fucking Backstreet Boys. I think when I have kids, when they piss me off, I'm going to make them stand in the corner and look at a poster of these dipshits. That'll get them to shape the fuck up. God, they look like dipshits. But since that probably won't be enough of a reason for you...

It all started about five or six years back. I had just gone out and bought the new copy of Madden. I can't remember which year it was exactly, but it had Marshall Faulk on the cover. That year. Anywho, I popped it into the Game Cube, ready to start yet another Franchise mode with the Detroit Lions. Yeah, they suck. We all know. The point is, Kevin, do you know what happened when my game loaded?

A Good Charlotte song started playing. I remember it like it was yesterday. I'd never heard Good Charlotte before, so it wasn't like I hated them at the time. My first impression upon hearing them was "Oh my God, this has got to be the worst song I've ever heard." The name of the song was "Anthem."

First of all, the word "anthem" is totally overused in the music industry to begin with. It originally was intended to mean those rare, special songs that really strike a chord with people and make them say "Wow, that's exactly how I feel." The problem is, anymore it's used to describe damn near any song that hits the Top 40 or lands a spot on TRL, just so record companies can try and make songs on their albums sound a hell of a lot more important than they really are. This, of course, totally defies the spirit of what an "anthem" is supposed to be, because the people who decide what makes a song an "anthem" are the listeners, not radio stations, not record companies, and especially not the people who write the songs, which is why I found the naming of that song to be a slap in the face of music lovers everywhere.

Before anyone had ever heard this song, these asshats decided that it would speak for people everywhere. You can't appoint yourself the spokesman for a generation, especially when nobody knows who the fuck you are and you need to get your shitty song into a video game for some exposure. The other thing that really irked me about the song, was the inherent contradiction contained in the theme of the song. The general gist of what they were singing about was a rebellion of sorts against societal expectations of what everyone should be, encouraging individuality in the way people live their lives. The problem is, they're encouraging everyone to be individuals by rebelling along with them and all being individuals together. Apparently, this song got written, rehearsed, recorded, and released without anybody ever realizing how fucking stupid this comes across. Conforming to a rebellion against more popular conformity is still conformity, no matter what name you might assign to it.

So in other words, Good Charlotte was a big boil on the ass of my Madden-playing experience of that year. Then I heard "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," a generic bitchfest about famous people who bitch. By now, Good Charlotte was pretty near the top of my shitlist.Then, I heard a Good Charlotte song dealing with teen suicide. I want to give them points for attempting a real subject that actually means something, but it was so generic and dumbed-down that it could have been written by a ten-year-old who just saw an inspirational speaker on the subject. See, if you don't have anything thought-provoking or intelligent to say, you might as well just stick to songs about getting dumped and hating your parents, because nothing you say matters anyway.

I guess that's the best way to sum up why I hate Good Charlotte so much. They act like they're much higher up on the musical evolutionary food chain than they really are. They sound like you put five monkeys in a room with a mic and a couple guitars. They make generic, shitty music, with generic, shitty lyrics that don't mean a God damn thing and won't matter in six months anyway. Music should be about expression. It should mean something. Or if it doesn't mean something, it should at least be entertaining and different. Since writing on here I've gained a certain amount of respect for the creative and artistic part of society. It takes balls to share your creative endeavors with society, because the general public is far more willing to criticize creativity than they are to embrace it, so I have a newfound respect for artists because I'm doing something similar. But I still find it very hard to respect those who don't take risks with their creative endeavors, and who just whore the spotlight, flooding the public with their meaningless shit that isn't going to matter in a few months.

You see, Good Charlotte is the antithesis of what good music is all about. Take someone like Kurt Cobain. He grabbed the public by the balls, did something nobody else was doing, did something a generation identified with, and has influenced a very high percentage of the music you hear today, and the music you'll be hearing for years. He has been dead 13 years, and his music still means something to people. Good Charlotte, on the other hand, can release a single today, and three months from now, nobody will be listening to it, and you won't hear it on the radio. That's the difference between a real artist, and a pretend artist whose work doesn't mean a damn thing in end.

 

 

If you have a question or comment, feel free to email me at randy@acrappywebsite.com.