Green Day repeat recent anti-MAGA lyrics tweak during Jimmy Fallon appearance
The band has swapped out lyrics in "American Idiot" since 2019 to reflect the horrors of the modern political landscape
Aux News Green Day
Proving, if nothing else, that there’s no level of gentleness with which you can poke the ulcerous bear of American far-right conservatism without generating at least a small belch of briefly incandescent rage, Green Day has taken up the job of tweaking the noses of Donald Trump supporters in a more determined form over the last few weeks. Right at the start of the year, Billie Joe Armstrong and his bandmates irked the right-wing during a performance at Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rocking Eve, when they performed their 2004 protest hit “American Idiot” with a lyrics tweak they’ve been using since 2019, changing out the line “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” for “MAGA agenda.”
Now, at the risk of being unkind, we will note the obvious, and point out that this kind of simple lyric swap is not the most extreme expression of political anger imaginable. Still, pretty incendiary stuff for a show that grampas snooze to on New Year’s Eve—and it elicited at least a few spasms of anger from the far right, unhappy at being confronted by even the mildest hints of public defiance.
This week, the band—who’re making the rounds at the moment because they’ve just released their 14th studio album, Saviors—revived the conversation at a famously hair-tousling venue, busting out “American Idiot” on behalf of Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. Well, technically, on its YouTube channel: The band appeared in one of Fallon’s stunt-y segments, busking in the subway in very obvious disguises before revealing that, no, it was Green Day! (And their friend, Jimmy Fallon.) That included an extended online segment where they played “Idiot,” where, interestingly, the band didn’t do the MAGA lyrics—because they didn’t have to, with the crowd on the platform supplying the modified line in unison, Armstrong smiling happily in response. Which, fair’s fair, is a good reminder that, while we might poke a little fun, ourselves, at the bands’ general “dads in their 50s can still fight the man!” vibe, these guys do still have their hearts in the right place, and an enormous amount of influence amongst their fans. (Also, they still sound pretty good—at least, when Fallon wasn’t hogging the mic.) And every little bit helps during an election year, which, our screaming minds are continually driven to remind us, 2024 is.
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So I guess expressing political stances in song lyrics is one more thing people shouldn’t try in a small town?while we might poke a little fun, ourselves, at the bands’ general “dads in their 50s can still fight the man!”Seems to me like that would be preferable to dads in their 50s becoming part of the establishment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is no joke. He’s really fucking up what he’s saying more often. He keeps referring to Biden as Obama and now this…#TrumpIsNotWell is trending #1 on Twitter
This site in its current form has no idea how to wield sarcasm, or which targets to go after, so it just kinda flails around in all directions at once.
As I push closer to 50 I’m surprised to watch friends and family slide into being more conservative. I really wonder if it’s something about aging and brain chemistry that sets it off.
Honestly it just makes me appreciate and have a whole lot of pride in my parents, who are now both in their 70s, for remaining staunchly open-minded, inclusive, and liberal (despite my mom being from a super WASP-y family and my dad coming from a devout Catholic family).
My mom has stayed liberal but my dad has slid a lot. He’s not wearing a MAGA hat but he has “opinions” on BLM and kneeling during the national anthem
Conservatism is a sort of political expression of nostalgia. It makes sense for many as you either have the urge to change the world to something new or something you remember.
I think it’s kids and money. As parents and kids get older, they become concerned with how their kids are going to make in when they leave the house, and they become susceptible to the Fox News narrative that the Democrats are really Socialists who want to take everyone’s money.A good friend of mine went this way. He is convinced that in 15-20 years, the government is just gonna take everyone’s 401k to fund expansive “entitlement” programs. He complains about the estate tax, even though it would never apply to him. In 2024, your estate has to be valued at $13.6M for the Estate Tax to kick in.
$13.6M for an individual. If you are married, you have to be worth $27.2M to owe any estate taxes.There is currently a push by some Representatives to do away with the estate tax entirely on the basis that it hurts small farmers since farmers own a lot of land and land is worth a lot of money. The real data is that only something like a quarter of a percent of family owned farms are worth enough to incur estate taxes, most of those are ranches the size of Rhode Island in the Great Plains, and people that have that kind of net worth usually do estate planning that gets around estate taxes anyway. In reality, 0.08% (eight out of ten thousand) people who died in the US in 2022 paid estate taxes.
Yeah, I always figured it was generally a money/security thing. You’ve built up your own world with equity, family, etc. over time, and you don’t feel invincible like you did in your younger years. The threats – real or imagined – are coming from all angles, you feel less capable to stop it and look for validation and a cozy narrative of who is responsible for your woes. I think people are especially worried most about financial policies, the economy etc.; that the money they worked for so hard over the years is being cut out from underneath them in support of someone who didn’t ‘deserve it’. As most analysts will tell you, people don’t pay two shits to Trump’s open threats of running a dictatorship, so much as they are worried about how McDonald’s hash browns cost, like, three bucks a piece now… seriously, what the fuck McDonald’s!?
“people don’t pay two shits to Trump’s open threats of running a dictatorship,”I think you are wrong. A lot of people really WANT a dictatorship as long as the person running it thinks like they do.Which is why Trump’s support remains strong.
This. Evangelical conservatives want a Christian Autocracy, because that’s the closest they can get to the second coming while they are still alive.
No, they want a Christian Autocracy because they’re still mad that slavery was outlawed. The Venn Diagram of Americans who want a Christian Autocracy (i.e. everyone has to listen to them and follow the parts of the Bible they like) and people who think the Confederacy was right (instead of a bunch of traitors fighting so they could continue their tradition of rape, murder, and genocide) is a circle.
a random question i used to ask people was ‘which would you prefer: a benevolent dictatorship or an imperfect democracy?’
it was…interesting to see who preferred which.
There are a few legitimate reasons why things that used to be $1 are now $3.One big reason (and one I’m not complaining about) is the large and fairly recent increases in minimum wages across the country. Higher wages at a McD’s means higher production costs which means higher prices for products.
I get that there are lots of base factors that led to the increases: pay raises, inflation, supply chains, etc. Ultimately, the negative force that binds them all together is the hyper-capitalist idea of “our profit margins are going down, so we’re passing that difference on to the consumer”. It is simply not enough to make a profit – you gotta exceed last quarter’s profits, and then keep repeating that cycle ad infinitum because the shareholders.
That’s what people say and I’m sure it’s true, but I still find it hard to believe. I’m in my 40s and I have kids, and I’m getting progressively more…progressive. What terrifies me is sending my kids out into the world the conservatives want. The socialists might want to take everyone’s money but at least they then want to spend it on social services rather than taking our money and spending it on endless wars and billionaire bailouts.
Unless you are in the 1%, current socialists don’t want your money. They just want all those rich pricks and corporations to pay their fair share to fund social programs to improve the lives of the other 99%. The idea that socialism takes from the middle class is ridiculous propaganda from the 1% and their bootlickers. Socialism created the fucking US middle class with the New Deal. The erosion of those social programs and removal of regulations on the ownership class is what’s killing it.
I agree.
Well, there are always exceptions. Not every person turns Republican as they get older.
Could it be that as people get older they gain life experience, wisdom and a better understanding of the world, leading to a more balanced and mature worldview? Nah, must be some sort of brain thing lol.
No
Just dismiss Universalamander. He’s a shitposter (in that he’s the one who posted tons of scat porn at Jezebel before they briefly turned off the comments).
You call screaming about everything being woke, voting against your own interests, and sliding further into racism and misogyny more balanced and mature?If that’s what growing up and maturing is, I think I’ll remain a middle aged child progressive, thank you very much.
It is funny that the same people that scream about how liberals need to grow up use the most childish terms like “libtard”
Similarly, calling liberals “snowflakes” yet whining and crying about Starbucks cups.
It’s pretty clearly a brain thing. I have a number of relatives who hit forty to forty five, had a mental health breakdown, and suddenly started going to megachurches and watching Faux News. On one side of the mental breakdown, they had one personality. On the other side, now Biden is implanting 5G chips into public school children’s gay books to turn them trans. Did your breakdown happen early?
One of the few YouTubers I watch has mentioned a couple of times that he believes it’s mostly a matter of society becoming more progressive as years pass and people staying more or less settled in their beliefs. IMHO, that does explain how some people become “more conservative” as they age, though I think others actually do move rightward in response to having a family and material wealth, as mentioned elsewhere in these comments.As for me, I started drifting left as I watched conservative policies time and again exacerbate problems, rather than solve them, and then Trump worship led me to jump ship entirely.
Yeah, it’s almost as if our society works really well, like, astoundingly well, and they don’t want it trashed by fucking idiotic progressive identarian socialists churned out by academe. Just a fucking hunch.
I think part of it is just feeling exhausted to be told constantly that you’re a nazi for not immediately rewiring your brain about every little thing because some 20 year old with a bull ring and bright red hair screams at you to do so.
You feel exhausted over something that doesn’t happen? Christ that’s sad.
No you’re right – this has never happened. Ever. You’re completely right and everyone who has had experiences that directly contradict your claim is either lying or mistaken.
If 20 year olds are constantly calling you anything then you’re either seeking it out or are paranoid and delusional
Sooooo unfunny.
Oh wow, when someone points out you’re delusional you assume they’re making a joke? This is like a Rorschach test for /pol/ retards
No I mean everything you do, say and think is unfunny. You’re a nobody who doesn’t matter lol.
lol and then dismissing my response like anyone anywhere cares. It would be tough for you to be a more pathetic person.
You dismiss replies all the time, why can’t I?
1. No I don’t. 2. I comment here like once every two months. I don’t do anything here “all the time”. I’m sure if you keep trying you’ll find some half ass justification for your objectively embarrassing behavior though.
lol yes you do, we discussed this not long ago, sorry for your shitty memory
Nah.
Pushing 50 as well. There’s nothing conservative about modern ’conservatives’. Older folks like my dad just leave Fox News and Newsmax on the TV all day. “Dad, yes the border is a problem but we can’t just shoot them on sight…” *sigh*
It’s more about the rising dread that the world them live in has passed them by because they have failed to adapt to the times. The fact that they have a lot more money and power means they dig in harder, like a tick.
I’m over 50, and I’ve been getting more liberal throughout my adult life.
As a dad in his 50’s who bought tickets to the Green Day/Rancid/Smashing Pumpkins tour the day they went on sale…for $300…I think the establishment won years ago.
Well, at least you can enjoy a $12 beer while listening to a raspy version of ‘Time Bomb’
Ha! Low key one of the best things about quitting drinking (five years sober as of last November!) that people don’t talk about is the amount of money you save. Being a ‘social alcoholic’ is expensive as hell. Now, I buy the $9 free refills soda cup that it seems every venue has anymore and that’s it. Even if I buy a t-shirt or poster I still come out way ahead over my drinking days.
Congrats, and best wishes for a bright future!
Poking fun at MAGA is not being anti-establishment. Such thinking is itself quite establishment.
MAGA wants to turn the USA into a theocratic autocracy. Seems pretty establishment to me, just a different flavor than what we’re used to.
Of course MAGA is establishment. It’s just that anti-MAGA is also establishment.
Right why would we poke fun at that? Also 50s is that old.
Ah, yes, the MAGA establishment, which consists of Fox News and…Rob Schneider. Every other media, entertainment, academic, and corporate entity on Earth have swallowed progressivism whole. What color is the sky on your planet?
They’re white millionaires, they ARE the establishment.
One thing I wonder about the people who are suddenly outraged about this after thinking Green Day was on their side: why couldn’t they have continued to be blissfully ignorant of the song’s message against their beliefs? If they were clueless enough to miss the song’s message when it was first released, why the sudden awakening now?
They don’t actually care. They just need to eat X amount of culture war supplements per day. Tomorrow they’ll be mad because a trans person was briefly in the background of a shot in some movie and they’ll forget this happened.
Reminds me of yesterday, with the news that Sports Illustrated is laying off its entire staff, when I saw people on Twitter insisting it’s because the swimsuit issue started including trans and plus-sized models. It couldn’t be that print is dying in general, or anything, right?
Couldn’t sell enough football phones, plain and simple.
Hey, not everyone can be as ignorant as Paul “I Am The Machine Against Which I Am Ostensibly Raging” Ryan.Pistol grip pump in my lap at all times… because I’m expressing my first amendment rights and looking out for crimes!
It could be a “perfect storm” of those things and more.
It honestly sounds exhausting being a MAGAt. Every single day you get new marching orders on some imagined outrage.
Hey, not everyone can be as ignorant as Paul “I Am The Machine Against Which I Am Ostensibly Raging” Ryan.
That reminds me of what still might be the best tweet ever, when someone said, “Exactly what machine did you think they were raging against?”
I like to think there was this one particular vending machine in the halls of Congress that never, ever game him the correct change.
“That reminds me of what still might be the best tweet ever, when someone said, “Exactly what machine did you think they were raging against?”The *washing* machine, DUH.
Elon Musk as well. How do these guys not realize that they’re the Machine here? The guy who was Speaker, and the asshole trillionaire? Who do they think is in charge?
I would guess that a lot of Trump people were aware that American Idiot was about Bush, but they also hate Bush and see Trump as anti-establishment, something Green Day should be in favor of. It’s incredibly deluded either way, but it’s present-day delusion, not 2004 delusion.
I’m guessing those are people too young to have supported Bush back then. In 2004 Bush was the only Republican in the last 8 elections to win the popular vote, so I doubt there were many anti-Bush Republicans back then.
Sadly, he won as a “wartime president” (how he campaigned) in a war he invented, and his second term was due to being appointed President by the Supreme Court for his first.
What does that have to do with Trump?
There are a significant number of people who are anti-Republican and pro-Trump, as stupid as that may sound.
Reminds me of Reagan’s co-opting of Born in the USA in ‘84, Springsteen needing to come out and say stop using my song.
This is no joke. He’s really fucking up what he’s saying more often. He keeps referring to Biden as Obama and now this…#TrumpIsNotWell is trending #1 on Twitter
In other news, I quite like the new album. I take particular delight in anything that mocks Elon Musk (which, given the Green-Day-side-project The Network song Hey Elon, I assume they’re doing with the line “bankrupt the planet for assholes in space”) so I’m having a good time. Not the most cutting thing in the world but I take it where I can get it.
I never understood how they are still popular. His voice makes me cringe. I guess I am getting old…..*looks at my copy of 1039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours on the shelf*
i’m thinking the venn diagram of “green day fans” and “maga” is a very slim bit to begin with.
This was even after Jimmy Fallon asked them to change the lyric to ‘Girl we couldn’t get much better’
“Let’s spend some time together”
Tre Cool was amenable to that, because in his mind they’re just words. But then Billy Joe replied “why don’t you change your name to Sidney, or Irving Cool? After all, they’re just words.”Tre Cool saw the logic in that, and agreed with the lyric change.But Plot Twist: the drummer is now known as Irving Cool.
That was a most excellent deep cut. Kudos!
I’m not a part of a libtard agenda!
That’s because you’re a moron & a scumbag.
Your post history reads like an incel spree-shooter’s manifesto.
No one wants you
If a 90s rock band can kick the world farther into becoming more livable for everyone, I’m into it!
Amazing that in 2024, still, NBC feels it must bleep The Word out of a YouTube video in a song that audaciously celebrates its use.
Boring. Shit band full of multi-millionaires who haven’t made a good album since Dookie which was only half good in the first place. Way to stick it to The Man while playing on network TV with the safest possible political take possible. Trump is bad? No shit.
I’m amazed that this isn’t more apparent to people in the post-trump world, where entertainment critiques are expected to have more substance than “X politician = bad”It was cheap virtue signaling with bush and it is again now
Wow! 1%ers fighting the power of 1%ers!!
These guys are giving David Coverdale a run for his money in the “cool auntie” look department.
Totally fair, and deserved.
Look at Jimmy Fallon turning his back with a neutral expression and pretending that he didn’t know the MAGA lyric was coming up. He’s such a milquetoast, fence sitting late night host.