Good Charlotte at Sonisphere (2010)

When you think of metal, you think of head banging, mosh pits and guys in Goth boots with hair down to their waists. Surely the first thing that comes to mind is not pop-punk rockers Good Charlotte. When they were announced to play at Knebworth on the Saturday afternoon for Sonisphere, nobody was quite sure what the organisers were thinking, or what to expect from such a band at a festival with a genre that was clearly not their speciality.

Whatever it was that people were anticipating, you can be sure that it wasn’t a set filled with heavier versions of their own songs, including pop-punk anthems like ‘Girls and Boys’ along with ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous’ that certainly got the audience singing back the lyrics at the top of their voices. As well as this, the band added in covers from the likes of The Police and Blink 182, in addition to dedicating a song from their 2007 album ‘Good Morning Revival’ to Jimmy ‘The Rev’ Sullivan from Avenged Sevenfold.

As soon as singer Joel Madden announced who the song was dedicated to, the crowd’s excitement was overwhelming as the screams could surely be heard from the other side of the arena. With emotions running high as thousands of Ax7 fans sung along, with their arms in the air and all eyes on the centre of the stage, as Madden tries his best to earn the audience’s respect and prove that the band are worthy of their place at the festival.

Although the thousands of metal heads surrounding the stage were very obviously not the band’s typical audience, Madden managed to grab the attention, and possibly the hearts, of the majority of women watching the band, who clearly fitted in much easier with the band’s usual crowds.

Constantly ignoring the male audience, Madden spent the time on stage when he wasn’t playing, making women scream at his demand, even going so far to invite the whole of the female audience backstage after the show. Despite the obvious enjoyment from most of the young women in the crowd, I’m not entirely sure that his wife Nicole Richie would feel the same about the matter.

The band surely was not the best of the weekend, considering the majority of people watching only chose to do so due to the lack of popular bands on at that particular time, yet most of these people were pleasantly surprised with the performance. Rather than insults, which is what would be expected had you been reading the Sonisphere forums just weeks before the festival, the crowd was yelling lyrics and cheers towards the stage. Overall, Good Charlotte certainly surprised the masses as they exceeded their expectations far more than anybody would have guessed.