It’s genuinely cool that Oakland boy Billie Joe Armstrong got a chance to perform at his “hometown” Super Bowl. Green Day was chosen to perform the Super Bowl pre-show, and they killed it. They did such a great job. I’m sort of in awe of Billie Joe’s voice too – he’s 53 years old, and his voice still sounds so clean and like he’s still in his 20s. He’s taken really good care of his instrument, that’s my guess. Here’s the preshow performance:
The reviews have been weirdly mixed. Green Day fans seem mad that the band “pulled their punches” politically, while the Trump-fascists are mad that Green Day is “so political now.” Speaking as someone who has been historically ambivalent towards Green Day’s music, my take is that it’s a little bit absurd to expect Green Day (or anyone else) to get up there at the Super Bowl and explicitly say “f–k Trump.” The message, in my opinion, is that these white punk-rock guys from the Bay were able to perform “American Idiot” on one of the biggest stages in the world. Besides which, Billie Joe already made his big political statement a few days before the Super Bowl:
The pop-punk band Green Day performed a relatively uncontroversial medley of its hits at the opening ceremony ahead of Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sunday. But two days before that performance, during another Super Bowl weekend event, Green Day’s frontman, Billie Joe Armstrong, took to the microphone to call on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to quit their jobs.
“This goes out to all the ICE agents out, wherever you are,” Armstrong said from the stage of the FanDuel Party in San Francisco on Friday, before using expletives while telling agents to quit their jobs. Sooner or later, he added, referring to top administration officials, “Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Donald Trump, they’re going to drop you like” a bad habit, again punctuating his remarks with expletives. “Come on this side of the line.”
These statements got a lot of attention going into the Super Bowl, which I think was probably the point. The band had to balance what they saw as their responsibility to follow the NFL’s rules and put on a pretty apolitical show with their own political agenda. Sure, it would have been great to see a band full of middle-aged white guys use their platform even further, but I get why they didn’t.
Screencaps courtesy of the NFL’s YouTube video.
I agree with in this!! They said what they wanted a few days before. They did follow the rules while playing the Super Bowl but I believe their message was still very clear.
The sad thing is American Idiot was written about W. We had no idea how much lower the highest office could sink.
I thought it was a great performance. I marveled at his voice, hair (loved the touch of gray) and skin (I know it’s probably make-up, but dang his skin looked good!).
i thought i read that the nfl cut their set short because of how political their shows were the day before? i’m ‘not sure how that works with the logistics of timing, and i don’t remember where i saw that, so who knows.
I’m completely convinced one of the ways the NFL kept them from saying anything is by putting the retired NFL stars on stage with them. GD would never do something that would ruin that for them. I’m a huge fan and even though I would have LOVED for them to say something, I’m glad they didn’t. They said something at the pre-SB performance and their music has ALWAYS had political undertones.
Side note: I need Tre to stop messing with his face.
Lots of people have no problem with coming up with ways other people should confront MAGA. It seems to be more a way to guarantee permanent dissatisfaction than anything useless.
Anyway, can’t see Green Day without remembering that the Republican Governor of Massachusetts, Bill Weld got busted smoking pot at a free Green Day concert on the Esplanade. Busted by reporters, not the cops.
I was at that show…for all of 10 minutes before they shut it down! But, I don’t remember that about Gov. Weld.
Well, there has been some tension surrounding the band since 2020 when the bassist’s wife decided to come out as an antivaxxer who agrees with a lot of right wing/MAGA ideas. She didn’t mention him directly, but it was pretty obvious at the time that some of her political posts were directed at Billie Joe.
At the end of the day, a band that routinely sticks it to Trump’s regime was given that stage. They could have got up and covered Wham’s “Careless Whisper” and it still would have sent a huge message. Or that’s how I saw it.
I think singing “American Idiot” even without the Maga line was pretty epic, and I have to think they were told “if you want the gig, you can’t use that line”. And while it’s way more punk to do it despite being told no, I can’t help but think they picked their battles. It was so worth it to have them perform, period.
I like Green Day, but they weren’t one of my faves during their heydey. I saw them on a very recent tour and they were absolutly the BEST live show I have ever seen. Billy still sounds amazing and the show was unbelievable.
I thought they changed the Holiday lyrics to “the representative from Epstein Island has the floor” but maybe that was a prior show? I’m still getting thru all the videos from yesterday.