GOOD CHARLOTTE // Rejects: The Soundtrack to Being Too Much + Never Enough And Why Being a Reject Is A Radical Act of Self Love, Acceptance + Rebellion

How Good Charlotte’s new song helped me embrace every messy, glorious bug-collecting part of myself.

I’m a reject. Always have been. 

Daddy left when I was 4. Momma when I was 9. Never first. Always last. It’s an echo chamber I’ve fought to leave, but maybe I don’t have to anymore. 

It’s June 25th– a loaded day in my personal treasure box of lore, yes. But you know what it also is? Rejects release day by Good Charlotte. For the past week, I’d been hearing the snippets of it and knew I had to write about it. Just from the short ten seconds I heard in teasers, it felt like a time machine. 

God was I right. 

The guitar intro feels reminiscent of their first album, Good Charlotte– a self titled debut in 2001 that was full of teen angst, some rock, some roll and a whole lotta attitude. Twenty-four years later, that’s all still there in those opening notes but more subdued, aged, calmer. But no less punchy. Vital. The guys are older and so am I, but the feeling of music and memory remains. 

Watching the music video brought me so much peace and felt reminiscent to the days of MTV, fuse and VH1 and the early oughts music scene I was so desperately obsessed with. After school I’d race home from the bus stop to hit channel 339 on DirecTv just to watch the new videos dropped. Clay-mation works for them in a way that is nostalgic and so Good Charlotte’s og roots. With the original crew on the track, it was like a weird time blip. I blinked and we all have crows feet and a few grey hairs. I wasn’t ready for that but the A/V made me feel like I was an angsty pre-teen again. Same sound. Same feeling. Just… older. Lived in.

Good Charlotte’s debut album was on high rotation in 2003 in my childhood bedroom. Quadruple platinum in my eleven year old heart with Tiger Beat posters on the wall and burnt cd’s on repeat, I was finding myself through music. How can a kid not feel seen with an opening track like Little Things:

“Yeah, this song is dedicated (this is Good Charlotte)/ to every kid who ever got picked last in gym class (y'know what I'm saying, this is for you)/ To every kid who never had a date to no school dance (this is for you)/ To everyone who's ever been called a freak (y'all know what I'm saying)/ This is for you, (what?)/ here we, here we go” 

I was fully in my burned-cd-Good-Charlotte-scrapbook-studded-belts-emo-haircuts era and no one could stop me. I dressed in as much black as I could– stripes and studs, spikey earrings from Claires– you know the ones. If anyone asked, I’d say in the most deadpan and serious tone, “I’m PUNK. I’m GOTH.” and vanish like a bat in the night with melodrama and flair. 

Nowadays, she still lives inside me. I don’t play with her much anymore, but I know she’s there. Sometimes we fight. Sometimes we cry together. Lately when I have hung out with her, I just sit with her in our childhood bedroom– she shows me the scrapbook excitedly. Princess, our cat is curled on the bed on our favorite Tinkerbell pillow (we are still just girls afterall). She gushes to me, I listen. She finally has a safe place to nerd out over the music she loves so much. The music that made her. Shaped her. Bad haircuts included. (We both hate it.)

At 32, almost 33 the angst is just as heavy as it was in 2003. Perks of being a big, deep feeler I guess. When GC dropped the teasers for Rejects, me at 11 lit up like the fourth of July and me at 32 was sat. 

Here we are, together post release and yeah– yeah. It… hits.

I’m holding 11 year old me’s hand and we’re dancing. We’re crying. It’s giving Elton John hugging himself in Rocketman (a scene that still makes me sob violently to this day), just with more than a dash of pop punk angst and teenage rebellion. 

We talk about music being memory a lot over here at BAM HQ and woof. This song is proof of that.

“When I was little, playing in the dirt/ No one with me, there were no words that hurt/ And all my friends, they were insects/ But all my feelings, I didn't know them yet”

Jesus fucking Christ. OK!!!!!!!! Yeah, so once again, Good Charlotte is giving me language to feelings and memories I didn’t know how to articulate. Not at 32 and sure as shit not at 11. 

Fun lore drop on me: I had a bug collection. Mostly entailed collecting dead scarabs and cicada shells from my backyard and storing them in my grandma’s discarded Altoid cans. I’d wrap them in tissue and put the tin in my Lion King purse. I was, objectively and hilariously speaking, a very weird child. And no, I haven’t outgrown it. I traded rusty Altoid cans for beetle tattoos, honoring that very odd and peculiar wildling I hold inside.

Additional lore: I loved mud. I loved the dirt. Mess. All of it. Made mudpies and slopped around in the Vegas heat with my cousins and brother until we were covered head to toe. It wasn’t until I got in trouble when I was 8 (??) for making mudpies that my love of mess changed, the freedom to get dirty and be feral, gone. Time to be clean. Bright and shiny. Maybe then they’ll love you. Ouch. 

I’ve always been sensitive. Cop it being a Cancer moon, childhood trauma or just sheer dumb luck– my sensitivity has always been used as a weapon against me. A dig or passive aggressive joke, thrown in my face when it suited someone. I had feelings I didn’t understand at an alarmingly young age– and one that I have been intimately familiar with most of my life.

“Sometimes, I still wish I wasn't born at all/ I've always had the feeling that this feeling is my only one”. WOOF.

Not to get heavy, but I think that feeling has been swimming inside me since utero. Consciously though, I was about 13 when I had my first actual “I mean it” thought about wishing I was never born. It was downhill from there. Add that to a violent upbringing and feeling everything from everyone– a messy cocktail of suicide ideation and dreaming of never existing came into focus. As someone who's spent the last decade taking care of other people's children, I couldn’t even imagine any of them having these same feelings. As an adult, your instinct is to protect them from the prickles of life. I’d like to think that I’ve become the adult I needed as a kid to the kids in my life. 

Even in my 30s, those feelings are still there anytime something goes remotely wrong– my instinct thought is “I need to self-delete” or “I wish I was never fucking born”. Whether I’m 7, 11, 19, or 32– the feelings are all the same: you’re too much, yet still never fucking enough. Too this, too that. Too loud. Too sensitive. Too verbose. Yadda yadda yadda. The thread that’s held me in every moment of self doubt or imposter syndrome? Music. It’s the link. The bloodline. The tethering that keeps me here on this mortal plane. Dramatic? Maybe. The truth? Absofuckinglutely. It feels easier to take yourself out of the narrative than to sit in the uncomfortable feelings. 

“Life is bigger, now the words can hurt/ I'm talking to myself, wishing I was in the dirt/ And all my friends, yeah, they're all rejects/ They all love me, but they don't really know me yet” 

I’ve never been popular or the one people picked first. Always a maybe, a back up or second choice. Even for my own family. As Penny Lane- the OG Band-aid would say,

"I always tell the girls, never take it seriously. If you never take it seriously, you never get hurt. If you never get hurt, you always have fun. And if you ever get lonely, you can just go to the record store and visit your friends."

My friends (IRL homies, you don’t count right now, ok? I still love you.)– the rejects (all-American and not) are the ones living in milk crates in basements and record stores. In liner notes and vinyl folds and record scratches. Cassette tapes in old cars and burned cds from teenagers past. Synths that make me cry and bass lines that get you freaky.

These are the friends that made me feel understood. Especially when I’ve spent my entire life feeling the opposite. The difference between younger me and me now? I couldn’t give a fuck less about being understood. How very (finally) punk rock of me. I’ll take the preferential company of myself and the friends that live in Spotify playlists and vinyl collections over fake friends or people that refuse to see me as I am. Weird bug girl and all. 

“They liked us better when we were together/ You said, "Whatever," I was never clever/ Sometimes, I still wish I wasn't born at all/ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” 

I’ve been dismissed. I’ve been waved off, scoffed at and counted and internalized so many eye rolls I've lost count. How convenient to be liked better when you’re holding the worst thoughts you have inside your hands. The watered down versions. The ones who don't quite know their worth. The selves that haven’t made it through yet. People counting on your downfall or staying small, loving you on the ground because it makes them big. Powerful.

This song was a balm to my 11 year old heart and every version after that only Good Charlotte could whip up like the pop-punk magicians they are. At an age when I was just learning what I liked in music and not anyone else's influence, Good Charlotte created my musical foundation of black emo hearts and ghosts of midddle school's past. It was finally an invitation to a party that I felt like I belonged to.

Shedding a light on a self that needs some good ol’ TLC from a healed and healing adult me– it was the map I didn’t know I was missing, the ancient texts of language I yearned for over twenty years. It was a reminder that I am seen. I am held. I am loved– in all my weird ass bug collecting and mudpie making glory. Back to the angsty studded belt roots that made me.

I’m a reject. Always have been. 

This time, at 32, I’m dancing with all the versions of me never chosen or loved the way they needed. And like it or not, I really don’t care. 

I’m a reject. Always have been. 

And thank fucking god. 

To all the rejects out there:

I see you. I believe in you. Dance in your weird magic and don’t let anyone fucking stop you. 

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