The members of Green Day have made it clear that they believe there is more than just one American idiot.
While performing during ABC’s “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest 2024” on Sunday in Hollywood, the alt-rock band went a bit off script when it played its 2004 single “American Idiot.”
Originally written as a criticism of the political actions of the administration of former President George W. Bush, “American Idiot” also protested what Green Day saw as the coordinated mass hysteria created by the U.S. news media after 9/11. However, in the recent live performance, the band turned its political ire from Bush to former President Donald Trump by changing the song’s lyrics from “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda” — a call-out of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
As with most things regarding Trump, opinions online about Green Day’s lyrical adjustment elicited mixed reactions. One notable critic of the dig was X owner Elon Musk, who characterized the change as feeble.
“Green Day goes from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it,” Musk wrote in an X post Monday.
Green Day has long been a proponent of speaking out against Trump and his politics. At the 2016 American Music Awards, the group’s lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong chanted “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” during a rendition of the song “Bang Bang.” In 2019, Green Day made the same “MAGA agenda” lyric change as it did over the weekend while playing “American Idiot” at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas.
Armstrong has repeatedly made his distaste for Trump apparent.
“I mean, I draw no inspiration from the President of the United States, because he’s just … there’s nothing,” he told Kerrang! in 2019. “Trump gives me diarrhea, you know? I don’t want to write a song about it.”
In 2020, Armstrong compared Trump to one of the most reviled political figures of all time.
“I think that [Trump is] the most divisive leader of a country since Adolf Hitler,” he said in a 2020 Kerrang! interview. “It sounds melodramatic to say it, but living in America, it’s just true.”
After Trump was indicted in 2023 for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Green Day announced it would be selling T-shirts with Trump’s infamous mugshot that had the word “nimrod” superimposed over his face for charity.
“Good Riddance,” the band wrote in an August Instagram post. “The ultimate Nimrod shirt is available for 72 hours only. Limited edition shirt proceeds will be donated to T̶h̶e̶ ̶G̶i̶u̶l̶i̶a̶n̶i̶ ̶L̶e̶g̶a̶l̶ ̶D̶e̶f̶e̶n̶s̶e̶ ̶F̶u̶n̶d̶ @greatergoodmusiccharity, which brings food to those affected by the Maui wildfires.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
