Donald Trump’s second term has already been quite an unhinged and chaotic mix of turmoil, fallout, and controversy, as both Trump and Elon Musk continue blindly purging the government to make it more MAGA-friendly and cater to their own special interests. And Green Day, longtime critics of Trump and his allies, aren’t holding back in publicly calling out the current administration.
During their performance at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium on Saturday, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong altered the lyrics of “Jesus of Suburbia” to take a jab at Vice President JD Vance.
“Oh therapy, can you please fill the void?” Armstrong sang in a fan-captured video from the show. “Am I retarded, or am I just JD Vance?” (The original lyric, which contains an offensive term, was “Am I retarded or am I just overjoyed?”)
Armstrong also modified another line in the song to reference the war in Ukraine, swapping out a mention of Anaheim for the embattled country: “We are the kids of war and peace/From Ukraine to the Middle East.”
The East Bay pop-punk legends have never shied away from political criticism, frequently targeting figures from President Donald Trump to Oakland A’s ownership.
At a surprise show in San Francisco last year, Armstrong altered the lyrics of “Holiday” to take a dig at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Armstrong sneered, “Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has the floor,” just before launching into the track’s bridge—a scathing, satirical pro-fascist rant that begins with the line, “Sieg Heil to the President Gasman.” (On the album version, the lyric originally refers to ‘The representative from California.’)
More recently in January, at a concert in Elon Musk’s native South Africa, he kicked off American Idiot by declaring, “I’m not a part of the Elon agenda,” switching the original lyric: “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.”
Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot was a direct response to the Bush administration and the Iraq War, and frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has a long history of altering lyrics to keep his political critiques more timely.
Originally written as a takedown of George W. Bush’s presidency, the title track of the album has since been repurposed to target various different controversial figures. During New Year’s Rockin’ Eve this year, Green Day swapped the lyrics to declare, “not a part of the MAGA agenda.” Unsurprisingly, Musk wasn’t pleased.
The Melbourne concert was part of Green Day’s Saviors Tour, celebrating the 20th and 30th anniversaries of American Idiot and Dookie, respectively. However, the band canceled its final Australian tour date, originally scheduled for Wednesday, due to an approaching tropical cyclone.
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Green Day’s fourteenth studio album, Saviors, was released on January 19, 2024, via Reprise Records and received generally positive reviews from critics. It debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, moving 49,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, including 39,000 pure album sales, 9,500 streaming-equivalent units, and 500 track-equivalent albums.
Independent record stores contributed an additional 10,390 copies, which were not factored into the Billboard 200 tally. In the following weeks, the album sold 7,000 traditional copies in its second week and 6,000 in its third.
As of April 2024, Saviors has sold 108,000 album-equivalent units in the U.S. and nearly 200,000 worldwide. Their latest world tour, The Saviors Tour, is set to wrap up on September 7, 2025.
Green Day is also set to headline Coachella in April, sharing the stage with Lady Gaga, Post Malone, and Travis Scott.