Entertainment

The Madden Brothers Are a Thing Now

by Rachel Semigran
MaddenBrothersVEVO on YouTube

Hey all of you pop-punk lovers of the late 90's and early 00's with your hot pink streaks and rubber bracelets, get in here! Joel (Mr. Nicole Richie) and Benji Madden of Good Charlotte are making music again. This time around the ultra-pierced and tatted-up twins are going by The Madden Brothers and just released a video for "We Are Done." What are they done with exactly? Well other than the other two to three members of Good Charlotte, the song is a quasi-anthem about being marginalized. So it's just as much "us against them" as their earlier days, but with half the angst!

The song itself starts off with an up-beat doo-wop groove (a la Mayer Hawthorne) that I wish remained throughout the whole song. Once they get into their "harder" riffs, the song actually loses steam. Here's hoping their new sound sticks to the actual "new" stuff to keep us hooked.

The video for the "We Are Done" is essentially everything you'd expect from a music video. For a pair that's aiming to make a comeback, they may have wanted to reach a little higher with their concept. Sure, there can be power in simplicity, but the video uses almost every single recycled music video motif there is! C'mon fellas, that's not very punk(ish) rock of you. We liked the funkier bits of the song, but the video totally has us yawning. Here are all of the things this video features that is featured in almost every other video music ever:

  1. Close-ups of ethnically diverse models of varying ages, sizes, and abilities.
  2. The blurry focus shift between background and foreground.
  3. A warehouse location.
  4. Boyband hand gestures (leave those to the pros! AKA the Backstreet Boys)
  5. A big american flag backdrop (Don't wanna be an American Idiot...)
  6. A gospel choir (This does NOT get an Amen.)
  7. A random ballet dancer.
  8. Holding up signs with the lyrics written on them.
  9. Deep messages scribed on the back of said signs.
  10. Standing on an urban rooftop whilst having one's arms spread to the sky.
  11. Sunset on the LA skyline.
  12. Filters all of the filters!
  13. Big boom lights from behind, because you know ROCK.

Check out the new video here: