Welcome Back GC!

Welcome back GC and boy are we happy to see you! :)

Whilst waking up this morning (Saturday) and finally playing Good Charlotte's new single "Makeshift Love," after hearing about it all week, we were inspired to write this blog! We've mentioned them before in our "Life's full of Inspiration" post, but upon listening to this song, we knew another blog was in order. Yep one Tweet or Facebook post was clearly not going to be enough to explain the feelings and emotions we had whilst listening to it!

First lets start at the beginning! :) One fateful day back in 2002, we were sat watching the music channels on TV and came across a song called "Lifestyles of the rich and famous." What drew us to the video at first was the fact that the more we watched the more our "Twintuition" kicked in and we were thinking, "Those two are twins!" Surely enough as the song became stuck in our heads and we did more research, we found out that they were indeed twins by the names of Benji and Joel Madden and along with Billy Martin and Paul Thomas they were known as Good Charlotte! The rest as they say is history!

Old school Good Charlotte.

Over the next 7 - 8 years we were obsessed! They were our everything, they even surpassed wrestling for a little while during the years Jeff Hardy was absent from WWE. We wanted to be in a band, we wanted tattoos, we wanted to play Guitar and I (Kelly) even got my very own drum kit! During our High School years we blasted their albums from our bedrooms every morning while getting ready, much to our Mum and Dad's delight. "The Anthem" was our, well, Anthem to life! We wore our MADE hoodies EVERYWHERE and our textile projects for our GCSE's in our last year of school, were Good Charlotte themed. To this day we are still very proud of our handmade giant cube and wall hanging!

In all seriousness though, while our Mum and Dad may not have been that impressed with the not going to college message that Good Charlotte seared into our brains from a young age, we really do believe that they gave us a quiet confidence to follow our dreams. Yes, they may have been behind a few of the arguments we had with our parents and also the reason we wore nothing but black throughout our teen years, but we were never too angry or nasty to our parents, we just knew what we wanted to do with our lives and with Good Charlotte's backing we were going to do it! We were shy and kept ourselves to ourselves at school and were probably the last people on earth that teachers and friends would have thought would go on to do what we did with wrestling. As much as we believe that we all have the ability to make our dreams happen, we also feel like people come into your life at the right time and that you are drawn to people with the same beliefs and work ethic as you. Whilst we may have just been teenagers back then, Good Charlotte bought out of us the determined side that would be damned if anyone was going to tell us we weren't going to do something. You may think that's a lot to pin on a band and that we had it in ourselves all a long, which yes there was obviously parts of us that were programmed that way already, but they gave us the confidence to keep believing, they really did!

Later on as we got more involved in our wrestling dreams, we didn't keep as up to date with the bands latest albums or what was going on on their website, ( FYI: our favourite GC site was Get Down with GC, run by Meg from She puts her makeup on! we are still in touch with Meg to this day and she is awesome! :) ) but when asked, they were still always mentioned as one of our favourite bands. Some music and people come and go in your life but they definitely were more than just a "phase" in our lives. They played an incredibly important role in directing it. We still listened to our Mum and eventually went to college, but we also pursued our wrestling and had a crazy, wonderful 9 years living out a dream!

In the last year we have kept up to date a little more and have seen what Benji and Joel have been up to. We were so pleased seeing them on The Voice Australia and when they came out with "Greetings from California." It felt to us like they were showing people that they were more than just two guys who used to talk about being "Rich and Famous" in a pop/punk band, it showed the world the business side of Benji and Joel, who weren't going disappear from the limelight or just be in the spotlight because of their famous wives. "Greetings from California" was a whole new sound that made you realize just how talented they are musically, as well as how smart they are with keeping up with musical trends and what is popular today. When we first heard "We are done" it gave us goosebumps and we were smiling from ear to ear with how awesome it was and yet how different it sounded from Good Charlotte. It was a definite summer anthem and proof that no matter what, Benji and Joel can not put out an album that we do not like!

This of course brings us to Good Charlotte's return and "Makeshift love" and the reason we had to ramble away and discuss all this. That reason is simply because they are AWESOME!!  The minute the song started to play we smiled again at the talent the group has among them! Whilst The Madden Brothers "Greetings from California" was a new sound for Benji and Joel, "Makeshift love" is classic Good Charlotte, a sound that makes our hearts happy, brings back great memories, makes us want to dig out our MADE hoodies and gives us goosebumps for how much people can truly impact your lives!

Some say we are all just human and that we shouldn't have to put certain people on pedestals, just because they are famous, when we are all capable of greatness, famous or not. We say embrace those who you look up to, be inspired by them, if they can bring out a confidence in you, help you become the person you were destined to be or even if they simply just make you smile, sing at the top of your voice and enjoy life to the fullest, then put them on the highest pedestal possible and say thank you for the joy they bring. Life is for love and for being grateful for what makes you happy and what you have. Enjoy those things and go around spreading smiles because of them! :)

So to Good Charlotte we say thank you for inspiring up to follow our hearts and to never give up. Thank you for making our teen years awesome and thank you for all the kick ass memories we have of seeing you live and... WELCOME BACK!!!! :)

Have a great day!
Lucy and Kelly