NEWSExclusive: Joel Madden Talks Religion, Nicole Richie, His Kids, & Having Lionel Richie As His Father-In-Law
Aug. 7 2018, Updated 6:24 p.m. ET
Joel Madden isn't known for sharing personal details about his life especially when it comes to his wife Nicole Richie and his two kids Harlow and Sparrow.
However, the singer was a recent guest on Shane Power’s show Pop Goes the Culture on the HAHAJK podcast network and in the interview, Joel showed a side of himself we've never seen. He opened up about how important his faith is, his family and what it's like being the son-in-law of music legend Lionel Richie.
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Check out what Joel said below!
Joel on God, Prayer and his Kids
“My kids are so cute when they pray. I pray over the food, and I pray before bed, and they’re at the age now where I tell Harlow ’do you say your prayers?’, and she’s like, ‘yeah’, and I’m like, ‘what’d you pray for?’, and sometimes she’ll say ‘nothing’ or ”I told God thank you for my teacher today." That’s what she wanted to pray for. I’m not going to tell her what to pray for and by the way, if she said, “No, I don’t want to”, I would say alright. What am I gonna do?” If she wanted to be an atheist I don’t think I’d have a problem. I feel like we love people the way we want to be loved, right? So that’s like our way of communicating with each other. And I’ve gotten a lot of strength out of my faith, it’s given me strength in times when I needed it. So my own kind of wants for my kids is to have that foundation if that was where she wanted to go. I love my daughter more than I love myself, and that would be a selfish decision to punish her for not believing in something that I believe."
He continued to talk about his kids and his views on raising children.
“The way that you parent, you ease into every stage. So I can’t think about the things that I’m gonna have to tackle in ten years, because I’m tackling these things on a daily basis, when, you know, my son goes, ”Daddy, when we pray, before bed, where’s G-d at when he is listening to us? Is he outside?” And I said, “You know what Sparrow, that’s a good question. You know what son, let me figure this one out. I have to think about this one. I don’t know all the answers, but I’ll get them for you.” I don’t want to make up an answer. I don’t know that my idea is the right idea to teach them, I want to talk to my wife and go, “What do we say? He’s asking where G-d is when we pray, do we just tell him in heaven? When he asks, where is heaven, what do we tell him?” Whatever we’re gonna teach him, I want her to be a part of that.”
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Joel on having a daughter
“Girls do something special though, man. They melt you in a way that I can’t explain unless you have a daughter. There’s nothing like it.
Joel on Nicole
My daughter — I hope she’s like her mom because her mom is one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. You cannot f**k with her. You can’t f**k with Nicole, even if you think you are f*cking with her. I’ve never met anyone on her level. She’s just on a whole other level. I just hope that Harlow is like that."
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On being a good son in law:
“It’s the one weird thing about me, is that Lionel puts you at ease. He is very comfortable, but I’m more the kind of guy that just wants to stay out of everyone’s way, I want to make it easy for everyone. As far as being my father- in- law, I always want to be a good son- in- law. I want to make sure that I do everything that a son -in- law is supposed to do. I have Lionel’s back. He knows that his daughter is going to be okay forever no matter what. I’ll get a job selling cars if I had to, I would do whatever it takes. He doesn’t have to worry about her.”
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Joel on Karma
“I’m kind of crazy with karma. I really believe that everything you do revisits you, so, I’m really adamant about the kids seeing the grandparents, so like, I can see my grandkids, you know what I mean? And like, the same thing with being a good son-in-law, or a good husband, because I want my daughter to have a good husband, and I feel like if I’m a bad husband, my daughter won’t have a good husband.”
In addition to chatting about his family, Joel revealed he is a huge Walking Dead fan and and even has a real Zombie Apocalypse Kit at home.
“I have a zombie apocalypse kit at my house. I’ve got freeze dried food, I’ve got a real deal medical kit, like, a doctor could perform a surgery with this medical kit. I got all kinds of everything. Imagine if something really went down here. I’m not talking about just zombies. I have a pretty sound compound that I could fortify and make it really good.”
To hear the full interview with Joel go to Shane Power’s show Pop Goes the Culture on the HAHAJK podcast network or click here.
