If selling a collective ten million copies of their albums wasn’t enough to silence their critics, then their astoundingly solid fan base that sticks with them through changes in sound, line-ups, and direction, certainly has. As much of a staple in tabloids as they are in the charts, the lads from Maryland are as popolare as ever, and while their commercial fortune has been fickle in other regions, GC’s popularity shows no sign of waning here.
Currently in town for a stack of promo duties and to host the Nickelodean Kids Awards with Deltra Goodrum, Benji Madden rang up for a chin wag with MTV about fans, getting scared, and what’s so fricken’ good about the land down under.
te co-hosted the MTV Australia awards a few years back: are te looking inoltrare, avanti to getting back to OZ for the Nick Awards?
Australia is absolutely one of my favourite places in the world. I want to live there, become a citizen, and have a house near the spiaggia and change my name to something really Australian and make records there and never have to leave, what più what could te want?
I never got to see a lot when I was younger, so I Amore travelling. I really appreciate everywhere I go, but for some reason Australia has always just really ‘got’ our band. It’s like we speak the same language. They get our sense of humour, don’t take us too seriously, but at the same time every now and then they do take us seriously and are like, ok cool that’s cool what te did in that song. I think te guys just kind of get us. I like everywhere else that we go and really appreciate it, but Australia always felt so comfortable, like a secondo home.
You’ve got a massive fan base here that is so loyal; most have been with te from the start. Have te seen a big change in your audience since te started out?
Yeah it’s been about ten years since we released our first album there. We have an audience that just stuck with us, everywhere. We’re not the biggest band in the world, but we do really well because we have this crowd that have never left us. They let us go through our phases and have seen us through changes and that’s really cool when people give te props for it and appreciate that. We’ve been really lucky.
Are te ever surprised as what songs do well? o do te know what’s going to be a hit when te record?
It’s a surprise, but when te record, te get excited about a particular song, but for us our rule has always been we want to make records that we love, we want to Amore every song on the record. So when the label says ‘this should be a single’ we’re like, great! Amore that song. So because we Amore every song, we just let the label go crazy with it; hey, what ever te guys want because we Amore all the songs!
Do te think it’s fair to say te write your Musica with your fan in mind?
Absolutely. I mean on this record, me and Joel were thinking about what we wanted to write about. te know inside of te your like, I need to get these feelings out, so I remembered back to when I was going through some different spots in my life where Musica really got me through. It really put me in a good mood and made my life livable, it was just me, and my headphones and this CD that I loved from this band, so I was like, Joel, on this record I want to write it for these kids who have their iPod o their CD player and it’s just us and them, and so that’s how we went about Scrivere this record, let those fan in and let them into our lives and let them get to know us a little better.
Have te ever found that your freedom to create the Musica te want was compromised as your popularity grew?
Nah, that’s one thing we’ve always been really lucky with and not had to subscribe to that way of thinking we always thought, the one thing that’s going to separate our band to all the bands we get compared to is we’re not the critics band. We’re the peoples band. So we just write our records and put it out there, what ever this record is meant to do, it will do. We can’t chase the success of the single, because that’s going to lead us down the road of not Scrivere songs that don’t mean anything to us, and we go on and play for a year, two years after we do the record te know, and that would be a nightmare. There isn’t a song I don’t enjoy playing.
So te don’t get tired of playing your big singles?
te hear bands that get sick of playing their one hit single, but I like all of our singles. And I still remember exactly where I was when I wrote that song, and what was going through my mind and what I was pissed off at, o what I was thinking about. Our first singles of our first records I still like playing them, like lifestyle, we play that at almost all our concerts and I Amore it, it’s a fun song to play!
Do te remember your first big performance?
Yeah, we played a festival near where we grew up and there was like 90, 000 people there. We were scared. Once te get up there though it goes away and you’re all good.
Do te still get nervous?
Nah ‘cause I’m just excited to get out there, especially over the last anno because we just fell in Amore with being in a band and Musica all over again, and now it’s like, yeah we get to go on stage in ten minuti awesome!
