So on the way to pick up some art supplies for a project yesterday afternoon, I was listening to the radio, and unfortunately, a Green Day song came on.   Worse still, it got stuck in my head, and I’ve been suffering the effects ever since.

It has gotten me to thinking, however — and not just about how to hang myself from the balcony railing using a bedsheet.  A single question has been stuck in my brain for the last hour or so: What, exactly, is Green Day rebelling *against*?

I mean, it’s obvious they’re upset about something.    Further, they always have been, down through their entire musical career.   What could it possibly be?

Let’s do a quick survey of their biggest, and sadly, inescapable hits:

From Dookie we have their all-time biggest hit, “Basket Case”.   This seems to be about how even Green Day can’t stand Green Day, and they are driving themselves insane.  That one I can understand.

Another inescapable Green Day song from my childhood was “Minority”, off of Warning.  Let’s take a gander at the lyrics:

I want to be the minority
I don’t need your authority
Down with the Moral Majority
‘Cause I want to be the minority

Aha! Specifics! They dislike the Moral Majority, the religious right organization founded by Jerry Falwell, prominent in the Reagan era.   Except… the Moral Majority disbanded in 1989.  This song came out in 2000.

What’s next, a song where they chant ‘Down with Byzantium?’  How about declaring your disdain for the Delian League?

(Minority also contains a leading candidate for the Stupidest Lyric of All Time:

“One light, one mind, flashing in the dark, blinded by the silence of a thousand broken hearts.”

How can anything be blinded, that is to say, be robbed of its sense of vision, by the *lack* of SOUND coming from a… metaphor?  Can I be deafened by the stench of hypocrisy too?  How about losing my sense of smell to the Touch of Evil? )

There’s also “American Idiot”, which has brought Green Day a lot of love from the left (who are, after all, remarkably cheap dates).

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.

Can someone, anyone, tell me what the hell that is supposed to mean?  ’Not part of a redneck agenda’.  What agenda is that?  Are they plotting to replace all our houses with trailers?  Force us all to watch Blue Collar Comedy until we kill ourselves?  Is there some sinister Redneck Conspiracy, lurking in the wings, preparing for the Glorious Gomer Revolution that will put all of us out in the countryside, on tractors, forced to drink PBR and eat Hamburger Helper?

This was seen as a bold statement, a searing critique of…. something.  Because he curses?  Attacks a strawman?  Uses the word ‘faggot’ once in a song?

Wikipedia tells me that the larger album was a concept piece about, and I swear to Cthulhu I’m not making this up, Jesus of Suburbia:

Jesus of Suburbia hates his town and those close to him, so he leaves for the city.[9] As the album progresses the characters of St. Jimmy and Whatsername are introduced. St. Jimmy is a punk rock freedom fighter, “the son of a bitch and Edgar Allan Poe.” Whatsername, inspired by the Bikini Kill song “Rebel Girl”, is a “Mother Revolution” figure that Armstrong described as “kind of St. Jimmy’s nemesis in a lot of ways.” Both characters illustrate the “rage vs. love” theme of the album, in that “you can go with the blind rebellion of self-destruction, where Saint Jimmy is. But there’s a more love-driven side to that, which is following your beliefs and ethics. And that’s where Jesus of Suburbia really wants to go,” according to Armstrong.

Wow that’s deep.  A punk-lite album about a punk-revolutionary who, dissatisfied with life, leaves for the city.  The deeper lesson? Don’t just smash shit, you won’t get anywhere.  An astounding revelation… that most people have in preschool (though, admittedly, not all: see the Neoconservative view of foreign policy).

Finally, we have their latest hot-button song, Know Your Enemy.   This… it isn’t even music, I’m sorry.   Even for Green Day this is unacceptable half-assery.  In a 3 minute song they say the word ‘enemy’  TWENTY SIX TIMES.   They repeat their choruses, not once, but twice in a row, to pad the length and make you reach for a razorblade.  Just look at this lyrical genius:

Do you know the enemy?
Do you know your enemy?
Well, gotta know the enemy

Do you know the enemy?
Do you know your enemy?
Well, gotta know the enemy

Do you know the enemy?
Do you know your enemy?
Well, gotta know the enemy

Violence is an enemy
Against the enemy
Violence is an energy

That isn’t just dumb.  That is a mind-virus.  Somewhere out in space, an innocent alien race, headed to Earth with cures for all disease, may have tuned into one of our radio broadcasts, heard this song, and are now floating, dead in space, curled up in the corners of their gleaming, beautiful ship, reduced to gibbering husks.  This song makes a convincing argument that all of human civilization has been a lie, and that we were better off bashing each other over the head with animal bones.

Whew.  Ok.  So, basically, Green Day is mad.  Mad at.. themselves.  Mad at.. the majority, whatever that is.  Mad at the Moral Majority,  which was gone 11 years by the time they got upset.  Mad at rednecks who they think set policy.  Mad at violence, which they want to use as ‘energy’ against silence, which they are even madder at, I guess.

If I can be candid for a moment, it’s hard to see how anyone takes Green Day seriously.  Here you have an angsty, rebellious psuedo-punk band that makes album after album about how they hate the majority of.. something.  How put-upon they are, oppressed by nefarious forces of the majority who somehow never block the sale of millions of their cds.   How any day now they’re going to rebel against the establishment, just as soon as they finish cashing in on their latest commercial deal, they swear.  It’s a joke.   Green Day is the Hot Topic of music, a shallow, blended, unthreatening, vanilla form of rebelliousness that is easily marketed to children.

I admit I’m a bit biased; I’ve hated Green Day ever since they recorded a snarky cover of ‘I Fought the Law and the Law Won’ for a Pepsi/iTunes commercial, where they paraded some poor kids who’d been caught downloading music before a national audience for their 15 seconds of humiliation.  Right.  That’s really fighting back against the big, bad media, the big, evil majority there, Green Day. That’ll teach those kids.  Rebellion is ok, so long as you pay retail.

*groan*