Good Charlotte consider themselves fortunate their first album wasn’t huge.
“Our first album did moderately well (by) industry standards, but to us, it was a huge success,” said singer Joel, who goes by only one name. “There was a little bit of pressure, but we were lucky we didn’t have some multi-platinum CD we had to follow up.”
According to Joel, such an outcome worked to their advantage when the band started recording their second album, “The Young and the Hopeless.” He said the only real pressure was from themselves, to branch out musically.
“My brother (Benji) and I enjoy singing together,” Joel said. “We’d fool around and sing along with a song on the radio. I’d be like, ‘I’ll sing this part, and you sing that part.’ It happened naturally.”
He also expressed his love for music of the past.
“I love harmony, I love older music (like) the Beatles, the Beach Boys – really melodic music,” Joel said. “We never really held ourselves to any standards of what’s going on now. We just do what we really love.”
“The Young and the Hopeless” is in stores now.
