Originally published via Armageddon Prose Substack:
Credit where it’s due: Dookie was a great album (their music was more compelling when their lyrical content was only about being bored and jacking off).
But that was in 1994, when I was seven years old. It’s been all downhill since then, their downfall into hackery complete with 2005’s American Idiot, and their insufferable lyrics genuflecting at the altar of neoliberalism with the titular song:
“Well maybe I’m the faggot America
I’m not a part of a redneck agenda
Now everybody do the propaganda
And sing along to the age of paranoia
Welcome to a new kind of tension
All across the alienation
Where everything isn’t meant to be okay
Television dreams of tomorrow
We’re not the ones who’re meant to follow
For that’s enough to argue
Don’t want to be an American idiot
One nation controlled by the media
Information age of hysteria
It’s calling out to idiot America”
Compelling stuff, right there. So the latest virtue-signaling stunt from the band’s frontman, Billie Joe Armstrong, is in keeping with the vapid tradition and not at all surprising.
Via Daily Mail (emphasis added):
“The frontman of rock band Green Day, Billie Joe Armstrong, is in hot water after holding up a Donald Trump mask at his Washington DC concert just weeks after the former president nearly died from an assassination attempt.
The 52-year-old rock star was performing at Nationals Park in the nation’s capital on Monday when Armstrong pulled out a Trump mask with the word ‘idiot’ written in black across the forehead, photos circulating social media show.
He angrily clutched the mask above his head – reminiscent of the time Kathy Lee Griffin posted a video of herself holding a ‘severed head’ of Trump that was covered in blood in 2017.
The singer also allegedly changed the lyrics in American Idiot to: ‘I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda’ – a move he also did during ABC’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve – moments before pulling out the mask.
Unlike Griffin, who apologized for the poor joke, Armstrong has not made a public statement about his brazen act at his concert.”
Via Vulture (emphasis added):
“Billie Joe Armstrong is, in his own way, still fighting the punk fight. Most recently, he pissed off Trumpers for switching the lyrics to 2004’s ‘American Idiot’ from ‘I’m not part of a redneck agenda’ to the more relevant “MAGA agenda.” You can sneer at a rich, middle-aged Rock & Roll Hall of Famer trying to be political on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, but it’s impressive Armstrong still has the power to upset people by changing a single word. Of course, the 51-year-old singer is just doing what he knows best: staying true to his longtime band’s interpretation of punk ideals and writing songs that have taught Gen-Xers, millennials, and now zoomers the art of accessible* political rock music.”
“Accessible political rock music” is shorthand for “superficial bilge marketed to retarded zoomers who have limited knowledge of the political landscape and as a result don’t understand they are being propagandized.”
Related: COVID Destroyed Punk Rock’s Anti-Authoritarian Legacy
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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