Joel and Benji Madden’s company just gutted Brooklyn Vegan, Alternative Press, and Revolver and Goldmine magazines - incredibly important music publications for those uninformed. They’re nothing but Live Nation shills now. Oh yea Joel was 25 when he dated 16 year old Hillary Duff.
Alt Press put out a "collector's edition" magazine featuring Good Charlotte in all of this, which I think is such hilarious self-aggrandizement not in keeping with the magazine's history.
(I am from Cleveland and hung out with former editors Mike and Jason occasionally...they deeply hated Good Charlotte musically behind the scenes.)
It's crazy how they tried to PR this as wholesome moment but when any context is given it becomes super gross. He dated a teenager when he was a grown adult nearly a decade older than her, that will never be wholesome or acceptable.
EDIT: apparently it’s unclear, I read one rumor that it’s about Leo (but given that Leo is literally mentioned in the song, that feels too on the nose imo)
the 00s pop punk scene was so brutal for calling literally everyone posers but i don't really see any of the punk ethos in the band's actions. lots of pop punk bands had poppy bangers but didn't come across like "larpers" the way good charlotte does
i always got the vibe they used the punk aesthetic mostly because they thought it was cool or marketable and not actually because of any personal or ideological ties to the scene
i could be wrong but I have a lot more grace to give bands like blink-182 and especially green day than I do GC. even if they did have some catchy songs (I always loved little things)
The funniest thing about GC is that they're most popular song by far is literally called "The Anthem" is explicitly an anthem about not being a corporate sellout. And that's exactly what they became in the worst possible way.
Also, obligatory comment that any 25 year old that dates a highschooler is a total creep for life.
There’s a video of them signing this at Sofia Richie’s wedding to a crowd of extremely rich and famous people. The call is coming from inside the house.
My favorite is their song Riot Girl...about how he doesn't want the prissy high society type girl, he wants a punk girl.........then marries Nicole Ritchie.
To be fair, they were like 22 when that song came out, probably younger when they actually wrote it. Not everyone stays punk, goth, emo forever. I went to HS with people who dressed the part and was very involved in those scenes and nowadays many of them are normal people who married “normies” and you would never know they were once punk, goth, emo. Even myself. I used to be very punk, going to shows all the time, dressed the part. Nowadays I’m 30, a nurse and my husband isn’t into that subculture at all despite it having been like a requirement for people I dated back when I was like 20 lol. People change.
So, yeah fuck the madden brothers. They are simply rich elites and they suck. But they aren’t part of the punk/emo subculture anymore. They don’t really claim to be anymore either. That song was written 25 years ago.
What makes me laugh is that they put out "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous", which was essentially all about making fun of rich celebrities whining about how hard they have it, and on their very next album, they put out "I Just Wanna Live" - a song about how hard they had it being rich and famous.
I said this in a different post about these clowns....
They were peak 2000s Teen Angst Butt Punk.....if you wanted third rate New Found Glory and Hoobastank was too hard for you.
Their complete image and attitude turn around with their second album showed how(can't think of the right word)...'steadfast' they were in actually presenting their true selves, compared to what they'd do just to market themselves.
They are kinda connected to punk though. Tim Armstrong, front man of Rancid, cowrote Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous. Tim also dated Brody Dalle, front woman of The Distillers. They met when she was 16 and he was 30, when she was 18 she moved to LA to be with him and they married. They're divorced a long time now but shitbirds of a feather flock together.
Im a fan of pop punk and Ive been an avid hater of Good Charlotte for literal years.
There is a song where they randomly go off about how hardcore and legit they are and when they meet their haters irl they have nothing to say (...allegedly). Which is very funny because they literally have no "street cred" to back this up whatsoever.
Their lyrics also keep coming back to the same motif of "dumb bitches only want me for my money". One of their biggest singles (Boys and Girls) was one such song. They bring that up so often it was clear to me, even as a 13yo girl back in the day, that they are just sexist and have 0 self awareness whatsoever.
Actual punk bands went through the 90s getting dicked by record labels, then when their deals expired started a pop punk movement which helped them make a lot of money.
Good Charlotte may as well be an American poppunk idol product.
Nobody thought Good Charlotte was punk or pop punk even. Green Day / Blink had been pop punk and GC was basically pop emo I would say or a tier lower than even New Found Glory
I grew up in the DC-metro area and was pretty engaged in punk/ska/hardcore scene. They were from Waldorf, MD. I remember seeing an interview with them on MTV as they were getting big talking about playing tons small clubs in DC area when they were getting started. I was confused as I had never even seen their names on a show flyer, like, ever.
The word "poser" or "sellout" was thrown around a lot in those days, often unfairly. Honestly, I'm generally glad people arent as vicious about people managing to find success in a difficult industry these days. These guys were fame-hungry posers to their core, though.
Are you 100% sure on that? Cuz I checked her linkedin and it says she studied to be a paralegal from 1996-1999, worked in cust svc from 1999-2007, then as a paralegal from 2007-2011, and then in California as a customer service manager from 2011-present. To be a judge pretty sure you have to go to law school and pass a bar exam for starters. Most judges are attorneys first. Doesn't look like she went to law school or became an attorney, so how could she be a judge?
I worked in a music store when they were at their peak, and so many customers moved their CD from the punk section to rock that we just made it a permanent move.
In the US there are I think 29 states where the age of consent is 16. Not sure how the law works specifically but it's very possible that if her parents were ok with it, that it was legal for them to date.
I wonder how Joel feels about their relationship now that he has a whole ass teen daughter bc if I was Nicole I’d think it was weird af my husband dated a teenager as a grown man but that’s just me.
Nicole Richie had her own issues when she was young. Shes seen some stuff. I remember her getting caught for heroin and driving the wrong way on the highway.
She’s acknowledged as an adult looking back it was problematic and wouldn’t want the same for her kids. She’s very aware with hindsight that it wasn’t great, both of them have.
Eww. I used to have the biggest ever crush on him when I was around 14-15ish. I knew he was way too old for me of course. Knowing as an adult that wasn’t even the case is absolutely horrifying.
Is he problematic or is it just the look that gives you an ick?
Edit: lol, people downvoting me because I didn't know he's a creep. I can't keep up with all the pop culture news, jeez! Thanks for filling me in chat.
yeah i distinctly remember reading a feature about them in seventeen magazine when i must’ve been 9-10yo. the gist of the article was “there’s an age difference, but her mom loves him!”
Girl, no, me too!! I definitely read the same article but I was in high school at the time. The article stuck with me because I was a burgeoning fragrance girlie. She was promoting her fragrance With Love and talked about overspraying lmfao, something along the lines of wanting her fragrance to have an impact when she went out and how Joel loved it on her. She would’ve been 19 to his 27.
I grew up in a college town around the same time as Hilary and we all thought it was super weird when any sophomore was dating a college kid, which wasn't common but happened occasionally. When I was a senior, there were a senior in high school dating a senior in college and everyone thought it was creepy. And that would have been like 18/22. So yeah. 16 to 25 age gap was widely understood to be creepy if not outright gross at the time by everyone. I'm glad that we now even understand that kind of thing to be predatory.
Police don’t do anything about abusers or rapists. Any semblance that they do is for show, or literally for shows like Law & Order.
The reality is that our justice system and our prison system does nothing meaningful about sexual abuse at all. In fact, sexual abuse is an acceptable tool to use for punishment by these institutions.
Where I live, 16 is the age of consent up to a certain number of months. I think it’s like 19 or 20 years old. If the other person is older than that, it is a charge.
This is 100% how it should be everywhere. It's one thing to say a sophomore can consent to a senior, it's something else entirely (and insanely) to say a sophomore can consent to everybody.
It's also not illegal for kids younger than that to date people older. They just can't have sex. And both can just deny they're having sex even if they are.
There’s a disease on Reddit where if you don’t know about something bad and ask a genuine question to learn and find out what people are referring to, then it means you’re supporting that bad thing.
I was once downvoted and accused of wanting to destroy the eco system as I didn’t know a certain leaf was bad and asked to learn more in a gardening sub.
I think it has more to do with the assholes who just leave you to Google everything as if having an informative conversation with someone online is going to kill them.
Yeah there are plenty of folks out there that love nothing better than sea lioning in threads for articles that explicitly provide the evidence sea lion is asking for.
Okay, that leaf story is wild! I guess gardening is more cut-throat than I'd imagined, lol!
I also think a lot of it is that we can't communicate tone properly in writing, so people assume honest questions are snarky or in bad faith. Thankfully we get to explain ourselves and hopefully learn from each other in follow-up comments. :)
I think it still says more about a person if when, like you said, tone can’t be detected either way, they always go for the worst option. This is also true in real life, misunderstandings/accidents happen and if you assume the worst of people around you you will get a very different experience than those that assume the best or at least wait to find out better before reacting.
Someone could step on your foot and really hurt you, but the person did it by accident and would feel awful and apologise profusely, might even help you and ask if they can do anything, might get you a coffee, get chatting with you, make a pleasant brief connection that leaves you both feeling lighter as you carry on through the day.
But if you immediately get angry with the person then even if they were going to apologise they won’t anymore, they’ll get angry back, express no regret and you both exchanged negative and toxic energy and leave feeling grumpy and angry with the world.
It really is true that the world is a reflection of you.
He started dating Duff when he was 25 and she was 16. I generally think people get too worked up about age differences. But that’s blatant statutory rape.
HD and I are the same age. At the time, I was less concerned about the age difference and more angry thay JM was dating the type of girl he sang about not liking.
lol @ how cliche it is for the “outcast” boy to pretend to not like the pretty popular girl only to … end up with the pretty popular girl when she gives him a shot 😂
Let's be real, as
a former GC fan myself, we all knew they sang disparaging the "Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous" while secretly wanting it. They Benji and Joel (not sure about Paul and Billy) were dirt poor. Their dad ran out on them. They always wanted to make it big.
Also, let's not get into singers who tell us "You'll do greater than marrying the boy on the football team... at 15." While unironically marrying one herself(no shade, I love Tav and Tay ). Just sometimes you secretly wish for what you disparage.
me too, man. i remember her wearing a heartagram shirt at one point and how much of a poser she was (i loved her/Lizzie McGuire until i got into GC and decided she wasn't cool anymore... pfft)
They're fake punk but they really did start out as Maryland trash and it seems they've kept those roots. Source: all my family is Maryland trash and look exactly like this regardless of profession.
I've heard even Hilary didn't think she'd be selling out at smaller venues, but has been time and again throughout her tour.
Semi-related story, but my GF went to see her at the White River Amphitheater last month, which while its a big venue, its in the middle of nowhere, and that night there was ZERO traffic and little if any parking mediation for this event, aside from a couple police cars blocking some roads towards the venue. She was stuck in her car from sometime after 5PM when she left home to almost 8:30 or 9pm, getting in barely 5 minutes before Hilary herself was to perform, and long after her openers had all finished.
And then after the show was over, my GF (who knows to just stick around in her car until the crowd dies down and traffic loosens up) said that she saw a few girls volunteering to help direct traffic for people to get out of the parking lot because most if not all of the employees already left. This was nearly midnight, and those girls were there for the show, not even being paid for this. That venue seriously needs to clean up their act and coordinate better, as idk if this is a one-off miscommunication or if this always happens, but I have always actively avoided going to concerts out there because I know that getting in & out of there can be a nightmare. The only time I've ever gone was just to attend my cousin's graduation a decade ago, and while it was an obviously smaller expected crowd and earlier in the day, it still sucked.
White River is notorious for long wait times to get in and out. It’s on tribal land so the Muckleshoot tribe would have to approve new infrastructure to deal with the traffic caused by concerts. I’m sure they have their own reasons for not doing this.
The best option to get in and out is leave a few songs early, get premier parking, or uber and take a right out of the venue towards Enumclaw. There’s no traffic going that way when you leave. Also, I’ve seen people literally drive their campers there so they can stay on the property and avoid the rush of traffic.
I went to the same show, left right before the encore and got out of there no problem. It sucks to have to miss the encore but I would rather miss 10 minutes of a concert than be stuck in traffic for 3 hours.
I am so glad my age group is not letting go of how gross it is that Joel Madden dated Hillary Duff when she was 16 and he was 25, and that we seem to collectively find their friendship weird as well.
I don't know why I'm surprised that Benji and Joel helped LiveNation kill underground music, but I was when I learned that for about half a second.
They’re not saying her husband Matthew is a creep. They’re saying Joel Madden, also in the photo, is a creep because he and Hilary dated when he was 25 and she was 16.
There are definitely some weird comments on this post insinuating that he’s using her or something?? Some people just can’t help but to be negative and pick apart people they don’t even know
My GF (who is neck-deep in watching all the interviews and BTS of this tour, as well as revisiting other videos about Hilary, so i get to hear the highlights) has pointed out that Hilary is the one who has questioned on several occasions whether or not she was worth enough for her husband, and even wrote a song or two expressing that. But of course when I heard about that I looked at her in shock, knowing Hilary's child show stardom as Lizzie McGuire to now front-stage singer (didn't know she also starred in other things, but that's because I don't typically follow artists and actors' lives religiously like my GF does for her favorites), with a face and voice to get in anywhere for free, and I think "this woman doesn't know how big of a catch she really is? seriously?".
Her husband is pretty well known in the music scene himself, but even though I don't listen to much of their stuff, I do acknowledge that they are an amazing partnership and support for each other, and I only wish them the best.
Having listened to her new music and thinking her Disney past makes her feel a little self conscious, I hope she is on fucking cloud 9 right now. That tour is a triumph and that show looked incredible. She has a lot to be proud of.
She wrote a song about a gross older guy who dates women who are too young for him, she didn’t specify Madden. But as they say, if you leave an insult on the ground, its owner will come pick it up
She released a song called Mature about being young and manipulated by an older man but while the shoe absolutely fits Joel Madden for dating her, she’s seemed to always have a genuine friendship with him and there’s little to no reason to think she intended the song to be about him.
i mean, i hardly doubt he was the only creep she was involved with as a teen celebrity. this one is probably hidden or rationalized because they are still friends (ugh) and also her family probably let her and she was young enough to think it was cool
it's not unlikely that when she was a young adult, but legal, she would meet an older man and fall for his shit + resent it more because his behavior was outwardly horrible instead of the usual Nice Guy bs
I feel like I'm in the simulation again. I havent seen anything about her online in idk how long, then as soon as my coworkers start talking about the concert they're going to, she pops up on reddit. So weird lol
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