Chad Gilbert, the founding guitarist of pop-punk band New Found Glory, has died at 45, according to reports circulating this week — news that has left the pop-punk community, and the many musicians he mentored, in shock. He was one of the genre’s quiet architects, a guy who spent nearly three decades shaping the sound of Warped Tour-era rock without ever chasing the spotlight himself.
Key Takeaways
- Chad Gilbert death reports place his age at 45; he co-founded New Found Glory in Coral Springs, Florida, back in 1997.
- He played lead guitar on every New Found Glory album, including the breakout 2002 record “Sticks and Stones.”
- Gilbert was also a respected producer, working behind the boards for several younger pop-punk and rock acts.
- He was previously engaged to Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams, a relationship that became part of pop-punk folklore.
Who Was Chad Gilbert?
If you came of age with a Hot Topic wristband and a burned CD of “Sticks and Stones” in your Discman, you already know Chad Gilbert’s guitar work even if you never learned his name. He was the guy standing stage left, headbanging through three-chord anthems that somehow still made teenagers cry in parking lots.
Born in 1981 and raised in Florida, Gilbert grew up steeped in the hardcore and skate-punk scenes that were bubbling out of South Florida in the early ’90s. That background never left his playing — even New Found Glory’s poppiest hooks carried a hardcore kid’s urgency underneath.
How Did Chad Gilbert Start New Found Glory?
Gilbert co-founded New Found Glory in 1997 in Coral Springs, alongside vocalist Jordan Pundik, bassist Ian Grushka, drummer Cyrus Bolooki, and second guitarist Steve Klein. The band’s self-titled 2000 album put them on the map, but it was 2002’s “Sticks and Stones” — and its single “My Friends Over You” — that turned them into a genuine MTV-era phenomenon.
What made Gilbert different from a lot of his pop-punk peers was that he never stayed in one lane. Before New Found Glory took off, he’d already spent time in the metallic hardcore band Shai Hulud, and that dual identity — sunny hooks on one side, screamo grit on the other — is part of why New Found Glory’s catalogue aged better than most of its contemporaries.
| Milestone | Year | Detail |
| New Found Glory formed | 1997 | Coral Springs, Florida |
| Self-titled debut (major label) | 2000 | First mainstream breakthrough |
| “Sticks and Stones” | 2002 | Peaked in the top five of the Billboard 200 |
| Engagement to Hayley Williams | 2014 | Called off before marrying |
| Reported death | 2026 | Age 45 |
Why Is the Chad Gilbert Death News Hitting So Hard?
Pop-punk fans in their thirties and forties are, right now, the loudest voice on social media — and that’s exactly the generation for whom New Found Glory was formative. The Chad Gilbert death news arrives at a moment when a lot of that emo-adjacent, Warped Tour cohort has already spent the last few years mourning venues, labels and scene contemporaries. Losing one of the guitarists who actually wrote the riffs feels different — more personal.
There’s also the fact that Gilbert never really stopped working. Unlike bands that quietly faded after their 2000s peak, New Found Glory kept releasing records and touring well into the 2020s, which meant Gilbert was still a visible, active presence — not a nostalgia act frozen in time.
What Else Did Chad Gilbert Do Besides New Found Glory?
Beyond his own band, Gilbert built a second career as a producer, working with younger pop-punk and alt-rock acts who grew up on New Found Glory records themselves. He had a reputation in the studio as someone who pushed bands to keep their choruses honest rather than over-polished — a very New Found Glory instinct, if you think about it.
He was also, for a stretch of the mid-2010s, one of the scene’s most talked-about couples: Gilbert was engaged to New Found Glory’s pop-punk cousin genre’s biggest star, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, from 2014 until the engagement ended a few years later. It was the kind of pairing that made sense to anyone who’d followed both bands since the Warped Tour days — two people who’d basically grown up on the same stages.
An India Angle: Why This Still Matters Here
New Found Glory never had a huge footprint in India the way, say, Linkin Park or Coldplay did, but the band’s music travelled through a very specific channel — pirated MP3 packs, early YouTube uploads, and college fests in Bengaluru and Pune where cover bands regularly played “My Friends Over You.” For a certain slice of Indian listeners who discovered Western pop-punk through torrents in the mid-2000s, Chad Gilbert’s guitar tone was practically a rite of passage. That’s the same generational overlap you see with how Indian metal and alt-rock scenes absorbed Western influences before streaming made everything instantly available.
What Happens to New Found Glory Now?
That’s the question every remaining fan is asking, and there’s no official answer yet. Bands have handled the loss of a core member in very different ways — some disband out of respect, others tour as a tribute to the person who built their sound. Given how tightly Gilbert’s guitar work is woven into New Found Glory’s identity, whatever the surviving members decide will be watched closely.
What’s already clear is that the Chad Gilbert death has reopened a broader conversation about the pop-punk class of the late ’90s and early 2000s — a group of musicians now hitting their mid-forties and fifties, many of whom are still touring the same songs that defined a very specific, very loud adolescence for millions of listeners.
FAQ
How did Chad Gilbert die?
As of now, reports confirming the Chad Gilbert death have not detailed an official cause. Fans and outlets are awaiting a statement from his family or New Found Glory’s camp.
How old was Chad Gilbert when he died?
He was 45 years old, according to the reports that broke this week.
What band was Chad Gilbert in?
He was the founding lead guitarist of New Found Glory, formed in 1997, and had earlier played in the hardcore band Shai Hulud.
Was Chad Gilbert married?
He was engaged to Paramore singer Hayley Williams from 2014, but the couple separated before marrying.
What are New Found Glory’s most famous songs?
“My Friends Over You,” “Hit or Miss,” and “All Downhill from Here” remain the band’s best-known tracks, largely from the “Sticks and Stones” and “Catalyst” era.
Chad Gilbert spent nearly thirty years writing riffs that soundtracked other people’s teenage years, and that’s not a small thing. Whatever comes next for New Found Glory, his fingerprints are already permanent on the genre he helped build.