Project Description

GOOD CHARLOTTE

GENERATION RX

(Album Review)

Reviewer: Chelsea Wood

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With yet another musician’s death at the hands of the fight between inner demons and substance addiction hitting the headlines over the past couple of weeks, Good Charlotte’s Generation RX couldn’t have dropped at a more pressing and relevant time.

Generation RX marks a new chapter for punk veterans Good Charlotte as well as serving as a nod to their early years as a band. This album, the seventh from the band, brings together Good Charlotte’s signature punk spirit and rock musicianship to deliver a piece of work not just full of anthems, but an album that conveys critical social commentary on particular issues surrounding today’s youth. Generation RX is the band’s direct response to the current Opioid crisis that’s sweeping the world. On this album, the band have addressed the issue the best way they know how; by speaking directly to the current generation of youth. Each track on the album confronts the issues of substance abuse and addiction head on by clearly telling the story of the life struggles and losses that are being experienced in this crisis, highlighting the array of people it is affecting.

Title track, Generation RX, opens the album. This short opener sums up the questions asked and answered throughout each track on the album. Its ghostly sound introduces us to the eerie undertones of the album, producing a chilling effect. From here on in, each track identifies and reflects the emotions and difficulties which surround the battles explored in the album.

Self Help is the exploration of the journey that is accepting help and attempting to gain control over addiction, singing out, ‘It feels like a fight. To take back your life,’ while Shadowboxer goes on to further depict the suffering that fills the lives of those affected by this Opioid crisis.

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Actual Pain, the first single released from Generation RX, sums up the album’s sound and its intent, providing a perfect glimpse into this world. It brings back the punk rock style Good Charlotte are loved for, while clearly identifying the physical and emotional pain that surrounds substance abuse. It’s safe to say it’s a track that encourages the tough conversations that need to be had in order to tackle these issues.

The following two tracks bring raw emotion to the album. Prayers pulls on the heartstrings of its listeners by simply asking why is this happening to us now? It shows the grieving process that follows the loss of a young life that’s been taken too soon by this epidemic, while raising the question, what is being done to combat it?

“And we would lay awake at night
Looking at the stars
Thinking of the ones we’ve lost
And wonder where they are
And when we lit another candle
She asked me who’s to blame…”

The piano driven ballad, Cold Song is the most beautiful and poignant of the album being reminiscent of the loneliness felt during the struggle between mental health and addiction. These same struggles build up into pain and angst in the darkest song of the album, Leech (feat. Sam Carter). This darkness carries over into Better Demons, a song that depicts trying to face your inner demons despite your spirit being dampened. Luckily, the closing track of the album, California (The Way I Say I Love You), provides an uplifting and hopeful exit from Generation RX.

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