Good Charlotte’s New Single “Actual Pain” Is Inspired By Lil Peep’s Death & Memorial Service

In anticipation of Good Charlotte’s seventh studio album set to drop in September, the Maryland band released its new single “Actual Pain” on Friday. In a statement to Rolling Stone, the group revealed that its new single (and entire upcoming body of work) is largely inspired by the death and memorial service of rapper Lil Peep last year.

It was no secret that Lil Peep was a Good Charlotte super-fan. The band was even in initial discussions for touring and collaborating with him just a few weeks before his death in November 2017 from an accidental fentanyl and xanax overdose. Good Charlotte was invited to perform “Awful Things” at his memorial service the next month, and later released a studio recording of its cover.

Benji and Joel Madden told Rolling Stone that Peep’s service was the impetus for their next album, ominously titled Generation Rx. The song finds the group returning to its emo roots, as Joel Madden sings through “broken faith” and deep pain within:

All this pain I feel
That’s tearing me apart
Is what makes you real
Deep inside my heart

The raw emotion of these lyrics harkens back to the band’s early days as a young emo punk band. The Maddens explained this musical direction as a conscious decision to return to its youthful optimism, with the added benefit of almost thirty years of experience as a band:

The wisdom that time gives you also comes with baggage and we’ve been searching for the door back in to that vulnerability, honesty and hopeful outlook that seems to only exist in innocence for a good 15 years

The album title Generation Rx also hints at its subject matter, with Rx being the common abbreviation for prescription drugs. Drugs—Xanax in particular—have played a major role in the burgeoning “SoundCloud rap” scene that birthed Peep, at the same time that skyrocketing opioid addiction rates are plaguing many parts of the U.S.

“Throughout this century we’ve seen the whole opioid crisis get worse,” Good Charlotte told Rolling Stone “We wondered if we were really doing our part. We wanted to get back out there on the battlefield and spread insight, share experience and give anything we could to improve lives.”

Generation Rx is set to be Good Charlotte’s first album since Youth Authority in 2016. That project served as the band’s comeback album, arriving six years after 2010’s Cardiology. It’s set to drop on September 15.

Listen to the song above and read all the lyrics to Good Charlotte’s “Actual Pain” on Genius now.