Review Summary: The Chronicles of Mid 30's Drama
Hooray, Good Charlotte is back! Yes, it's true, except for the "hooray" part, because the members of thisbnd, despite being all in their mid thirties, they just can't grow up (much like Simple Plan). And while most pop punk bands from the 2000's mostly reinvented their lyrics and sound, Good Charlotte tries to bring a blast from the past with this album, however such blast has no purpose at all, except annoying listeners with the never ending cliches, and John Feldmann's infamous over-influenced production.
For God's sake, never before people have heard such a lackluster reunion album since Fall Out Boy released their Save Rock & Roll album, which is incredibly generic, considering how good I thought Folie a Deux was. Well, screw FOB; this is Good Charlotte who we're talking about here. The album starts with the catchy yet uninspired "Life Changes", and speaking of that, all of the songs on Youth Authority are uninspired bullcrap, just saying. And after that stupid intro, we're graced to "Makeshift Love", which is actually pretty catchy as well, but sadly the only better song on this album so far, because the rest of the album is just... boring. Joel Madden singing in this album is as annoying as ever, and worse when he tries to do higher vocals, like in the song "40 oz Dream", which is one of the most wack Sumblime ripoff songs I ever heard, and the lyrics are not better, either. Still cliche as the rest of the album. Disappointing.
About the production, it is still as overproduced and annoyingly clean as ever; at least their older albums had some edginess to the sound, this is clean as hell, with the annoying claps, and a presence of "woahs" which actually beat the annoying ones from California by blink-182, also produced by Feldy, unsuprisingly.
Okay, so Good Charlotte wants the world to know they're back, but the problem is that the world doesn't care about no chronicles of life and death, not even youth authority from guys who are almost 40, they just want a boring band to go away and die in peace, like they'd have done already in 2011, instead of a hiatus.
Recomended songs:
Makeshift Love
Avoidable songs:
Everything else
Pros:
- Makeshift Love is pretty catchy
Cons:
- John's production is too clean
- 40 oz Dream is a Sublime ripoff
- Kellin Quinn's featured vocals in "Keep Swingin" are annoying
