The River

This song is about sin and redemption that traverses the dark side of Los Angeles. It references Christ's parable of the prodigal son, who after running away and squandering his share of his father's inheritance, returns and is welcomed back by his forgiving dad. The father then celebrates his repentant son's homecoming by organizing a feast. Another biblical allusion in this song is the first line, "as I walk through the valley of the shadow of LA," which references a line from the 23rd ("The Lord Is My Shepherd") Psalm, "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death."

This song features the vocalist M. Shadows and guitarist Synyster Gates from Avenged Sevenfold. It was the first time Good Charlotte has officially collaborated with other artists on an album. Frontman Joel Madden explained about the collaboration on goodcharlotte.com: "We've been friends with Avenged for a long time. This wasn't planned, but it ended up working out. We were sitting around listening to some new music and they liked that song so we asked them to jump on. It felt right and sounded really cool. Aside from being friends of ours, we're also fans of their music and since this is our first collaboration, we couldn't be happier that they're a part of our record."