After seven years, Good Charlotte have returned with brand-new album Motel Du Cap, out today (August 8th).
It’s been a long time coming for fans of the illustrious US pop-punk outfit, and many wondered if they would ever return. After the release of 2018’s Generation Rx and an ensuing tour, the Maryland-formed band have largely been inactive.
For frontman Joel Madden, the possibility that Good Charlotte were done for good was very real. In fact, he was comfortable with it.
“I know it sounds weird,” he tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ over Zoom. “It’s not cynical. We love this band, man. We’ve been in this band since we were in high school, and the four of us have been together… we’re coming up on 30 years. But everybody feels the same way. They all have families, and they’re not dying to do anything unless we all want to be there, because we actually do respect it.
“It’s not a horse we can beat. It’s not a moneymaker. That’s not how we see it. We all work outside of the band, we all have day jobs we love. We all are happy.”
It seemed that Good Charlotte was done until April 2023, when Madden’s sister-in-law, model and influencer Sofia Richie (who also happens to be a major Good Charlotte fan), asked for the band to play at the afterparty of her wedding at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in the South of France.
“When I called [the band] for the wedding after five years, we hadn’t played a gig,” Madden recalls. “We talk, so it’s not like it’s a call out of the blue, but… we had not thought about playing a show. And when I called them for the wedding and the quickness in which everyone said ‘Yes, of course I’ll be there,’ I was touched… it was important to me. This is my little sister, but it’s my sister-in-law, so, like, they barely know her. They know her because she used to come to our shows and she grew up on our band, but like, they could have said no. They’re gonna fly to the south of France to play a show for free?! You know what I mean?
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“We had to rehearse. We had to put it all together and I wanna make sure it’s perfect ’cause [Richie] loves our band and I wanted to give her the shows she wanted, not like some half-ass old tired bullshit show. We put a lot of effort into making it feel special and that’s actually what I cared about the most, was giving her what she asked for, which was a gift. It was a perfect night and we were all having a great time and we were hanging around… and then we were like, ‘Should we make a record?’ And we were laughing and then everyone was like ‘actually, I think we could fuck shit up if we made a record’ because the show was good and we were fucking good. And then the conversation continued.”
From there, Good Charlotte, led by Joel and brother Benji, got to work. They enlisted Jordan Fish (formerly of Bring Me the Horizon) and Zakk Cervini (whose recent credits include blink-182, A Day to Remember, and Architects) to produce and the result is Motel Du Cap.
After first forming in 1995, Good Charlotte properly made a splash in 2000 with their debut self-titled album, and it was a rapid rise from there. After enjoying success with their debut single, “Little Things”, their second effort, 2002’s The Young and the Hopeless, boasted more global hits, including “The Anthem”, “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous”, and “Girls & Boys”.
These were the kind of sounds that inspired Motel Du Cap.
“The sound of the record is interesting ’cause we just kind of showed up and wrote songs,” Madden shares. “Jordan Fish and Zakk Cervini, we felt like were two of the best young modern record makers that are making interesting records and they’re in it, they’re living that life. We needed that energy, I think, that modern record maker energy that they have. It was a collaboration. So… we did the old school show up, write a song a day and record it. And that’s kind of how we made all of our early records. We show up, we write a song a day, we’d record it. And all those records were made kind of fast.
“This record was similar. When you hear ‘Rejects’, that was the first take of everything. So when you hear a lot of those guitar parts, they might sound polished or whatever, but they are tgw first takes of the guitar, first takes of the vocals. So there is like a rawness underneath it.”
“Jordan was a big force behind Bring Me the Horizon when he was in the band and he left the band to focus full time on making records, and his dream is [to] be a producer and make big rock records and he set out to do that on this record. And Zakk, I think, is the same. We were lucky to collaborate with really talented guys who both know rock and love rock music, and we wanted to make a rock record. We wanted to make a Good Charlotte record, which is, kind of interesting, like, quirky personality, little bits and pieces that are kind of weird. That’s Good Charlotte.”
Fans may ask why 2025 is the right time for Good Charlotte to return.
As well as the fact that all band members are proud family men (Joel and Benji have both had very public marriages to Nicole Richie and Cameron Diaz, respectively), the pop-punk genre has enjoyed a major resurgence in recent years: Tom DeLonge returned to blink-182; bands like Fall Out Boy and Paramore came back after years away; Yellowcard reformed after splitting in 2017; Machine Gun Kelly entered the scene; there was also the success of Las Vegas’ When We Were Young festival — it seemed the perfect time for Good Charlotte to get involved.
But family has always come first for the band.
“We all are dedicated to our wives and kids. All of us come from tough family backgrounds, like, broken homes and things like that. Truly, one of our aspirations was to have families. And I think when we all got married and had kids, we put that first. Now we’re at a place where it’s pretty cool with the band where we’re like, aside from me, I have to show up and sing, but if [guitarist Billy Martin] had to miss a show for his kid’s basketball game, we would figure it out. We would bring a guitar player and learn his parts. I know it wouldn’t be the same maybe for the fans of Billy or whatever, but like, we’re at a place now where we all like we’re figuring out how to do Good Charlotte and still either bring the families or none of us are gonna miss whatever we can stand not to miss. That’s just where we’re at.”
Adding to that, Madden isn’t interested in being a nostalgia act.
“I’m always skeptical of waves and resurgences and revivals, and when people start naming it and tagging it and calling it something. I’m more inclined not to, if I’m being honest. It’s not that I’m hating on it. I just don’t think Good Charlotte would ever do an anniversary tour. I’m 46 years old. When I go on stage, I wanna be 46 on stage. I don’t want to be 22.
“We’ve spent weeks rehearsing our live show to be us, so it sounds like us now. I gotta say we’re better than we’ve ever been live. We’re better musicians. We’ve got experience. We’ve all had experience writing and producing and so we all bring that to the live show now and we’re a better band live than we were 10 years ago, 15 years ago, certainly 20 years ago.
“We’ve dialled the show up to where we wanted it to be as 40 something year old guys and we also made a record that 40-something year old guys could sing. We play our all of our old songs, but we play the version we play now, and it might sound different to some people. To me, it just sounds bigger and badder and, and more full and the guitar tones are better and everything’s just, I think, got seasoned.”
Once Motel Du Cap is out in the world, Good Charlotte intend to embark on a world tour and that includes Australia.
As Madden tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ, the plan is to play in arenas around the country in early 2026.
“We were trying to surprise dates this year, but it’s been too hard with something with the venues or something. I don’t know. It’s been too hard to get dates, whatever the complications has been this year, because we wanted to drop around when the record comes, drop surprise dates. I think it’ll be arena shows, so it’s harder to move those things around. So I think we’re gonna come as quickly as we can at the top of ’26. That’s what we’re talking about right now.”
It’s fair to assume, given the time taken off, that Good Charlotte could very well ride off into the sunset following Motel Du Cap. After all, Madden himself has previously admitted he is comfortable moving forward without it. There was even a time when he “felt a little bit out of date” when it came to songwriting.
But as he puts it: “It feels like we’re ramping up, not down.”
“It feels like we’re definitely kicking off bigger shows than we’ve ever played in our life, which is also like pretty exciting. To be received that way, to have that reception, I don’t know if we’ve had this much fun live because we’re getting to play around a lot with like we’re bringing in other musicians.
“I realised making this record… It’s not about if you’re with the times or not, you just write a song and if you like it, record it and then see if you like the recording of it. And if you like it, you can put it on the record, and then you can live with it. And then that’s OK. I don’t know what I was overthinking before, but I think that we’ve kind of reignited a passion for making records…”
“Me and Benji had a lot of fun together making this record. It felt like we were back in that bedroom where we started this band, the two of us. It really did. It felt a little magical, it felt a little raw, it felt a little unknown. Where does Good Charlotte fit in 2025? Where do we fit in 2025? Where does our record fit in 2025? I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that we made a record we like. We love it. I like every song. I love the album art, I love the title, I love the vibe, I love the era that it’s kicking off, however long or short it is. I just think it’s real.”
Good Charlotte’s Motel Du Cap is out now.
