~*Song Meanings*~





Have you ever wonder what the meanings behind the songs were? Well here it is!


Self-titled
"Little Things"- "High school sucked for us and we were reminiscing about it and started out lyrics about our what happened to us in high school and our experiences. The song is an autobiographical tale about our high school years." - Benji

"After we wrote the song I really looked at it, I was like, 'Whoa. This all sounds pretty bad.' The part about my mom, the part about my dad...that's where it's really sensitive because it's not me anymore, it's someone else." - Joel

"Motivation Proclamation"- "Motivation Proclamation is about not feeling motivated and feeling bad about yourself...and wanting someone to come and pick you up. Benji and I wrote it together." - Joel

"There was a point especially before we got signed when there was almost a feeling of [desperation]. Am I ever gonna get to where I won't have to wonder if I'm going to get kicked out of the place I'm staying? If I'm gonna be able to eat tomorrow? Is our band ever going to get signed? Is this ever going to happen? You just want to get out of it, you want to get out of the rut you're stuck in." - Joel

"It's great especially because it ("Motivation Proclamation") is a song about being down. We were at a point before we were signed so we were at our lowest point; we had nowhere to live, we had no money and we just wrote that song. It's kinda weird now because it is a pretty happy sort of song but you wouldn't know we were at a breaking point when we wrote it." - Joel

"Festival Song"- "Festival song is ah, basically not wanting to subscribe to like the status quo, you know the normal life that everyone has, you know when you're growing up everyone wants you to do a certain thing, they want you to live a certain way, and kids like us we didn't have a lot of the opportunities that other people had but we still were expected to do that. We wrote this song saying forget about it and we're gonna do our own thing, and that;s what festival song is." - Joel

"I grew up coming to HFStival. I wrote this song about being there, how we wanted to quit our jobs to be in a band. We have all our friends, the fans and the radio support right here." - Joel

"Change"- "I wrote a song, Change, on our album for a girl. It's the classic story of loving someone who doesn't love you back." - Joel

"Thank you, Mom"- "We thought it was an appripriate way to end our first record, my mom has done a lot for our band. Lit offered us a bunch fo shows on their tour, and we had no way to go because we had nothing to drive. My mom gave us her minivan, the only thing she owned, and she walked to work so we could go on tour. There's nothing I could do to repay my mom. She's heard the songs and she loves our music. That's another reason that there's no curing on our record - because of mom." - Benji


The Young And The Hopeless
"Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"- The first single from The Young and the Hopeless is this biting commentary on both celebrity self-pity and and justic that's bought and paid for. It's a fearless critique of American cultire from a street-level point of view.

"We've read articles in Rolling Stone where artists are just complaining about their lives. When we were young and coming up with this band, we would have done anything to make it. If we got an article in the magazine, we'd feel lucky to be there. That's why we wrote that." - Benji

"It's our take on the celeb world. We're surrounded by people whose lives we don't get. We're making up of them in this song." - Joel

"Girls and Boys"- "It's a commentary of superficiality between girls and boys, women and men. 'Girls don't like boys, gils like cars and money/Boys will laugh at girls when they're not funny.' That says it all. That's the chorus. We see that a lot." - Benji

"Hold On"- In the course of their many months on tour, Good Charlotte encountered hundreds of new fans across the country. Benji and Joel met many that shared their experiences of poverty and abuse, who contemplated running away or even suicide. The twins wrote this song in response, and today Benji cites it as one of their favorite tracks on The Young and the Hopeless. The unforgettable chorus goes: "Hold on, if you feel like letting go/Hold on, it gets better than you know."

"The Anthem"- A song for the so-called "losers" in every junior high and high school across America, the ones who are shunned and mocked for their appearance or their foreign background or their lack of money. Benji and Joel knew-and befriended-some of those kids, and now have given them what Benji calls "a song that would help them get through the day. It's a song that could help them say, "hey, bring it on-it won't bother me because I don't wanna be like you."

"Bloody Valentine"- Inspired by Edgar Allen Pie's classic story The Telltale Heart. This haunting tragic tale of mad love is a prime example of the twins' more mature writing style and their expanded creative horizons.

"It's about a girl who's got a boyfriend, and this guy's in love with her, so he kills her boyfriend. It's got, like, an Edgar Allen Poe kind of vibe." - Benji

"The song is more of a poem. It's a story about a love triangle, but it's got a real Edgar Allen Poe vibe to it. Basically there's a guy that knows a girl and wants to be with her so he kills her boyfriend. It's definitely different than anything we've ever done and that's one reason we like it so much. It's something we couldn't have written four years ago." - Benji

"Riot Girl"- "That's definitely describing my dream girl, my punk rock girl. But good punk rock girls are hard to find. They're always mean." - Benji

"Emotionless"- When the twins were 16, their father walked out on Christmas Eve, leaving their mother alone to care for four children. His departure sent the family into financial tailspin, ultimately lead to eviction from their home.

"I feel like my dad affected my life in a bad way for long enough when I was younger, and I'm not gonna let him do it anymore. I'm not gonna carry that burden of being hateful and angry. So 'Emotionless' is a song of forgiveness. I'll forgive him for my sake: I won't let those feelings about him affect the way I treat other people or the way I live my life." - Benji


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