How Green Day Impacted the way People View Politics and the Media

By: Maureen Taghon

Today when you turn on the radio you hear similar sounding songs. You hear DJs, which are now being played more on the radio than actual guitar music. But going back to the 1980s, you have the rise of many famous punk rock bands like Ramones, Nirvana, Misfits, etc. In 1986, while these bands are on the rise, you have three guys who are just becoming a band, of which only two will fully stay with the band, and become very well known. And not only will they become well know, they will also affect the way some people view politics and the media. These two are guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt- and later drummer Tre Cool- who became known as Green Day.

It all started in 1986 when a group of friends just wanted to start a band in high school. They started out just playing at small gigs like at Rod’s Hickory Pit in Vallejo, California. Then, in 1988, Green Day was signed to Lookout! Records by the record label’s owner, Larry Livermore. In 1889, the band recorded and released their first EP, 1,000 Hours. Their first full studio album, 39/Smooth, was released in 1990. This set off a wave of more EPs being released within the year which were, “Slappy and Sweet Children the latter of which included older songs that the band had recorded for the Minneapolis independent record label Skene! Records” (Wikipedia). Kerplunk, the band’s second studio album, was released in 1992, and due to the amount of success the album had, many major record labels were interested to sign Green Day. One of which was Reprise Records, which is who the band left Lookout! for, after attracting the attention of the producer Rob Cavallo.

This first thing that the band did after signing with Reprise was record an album. Their first debut album with Reprise was Dookie, which became the best selling that they had at the time. During this time, Green Day was promoting the album by appearing at several big name festivals like Lollapalooza and Woodstock. Dookie was the album that finally brought people’s attention to Green Day. It is believed that, “the second most influential rock album of the 1990s is Dookie by Green Day” (Romano). It gave a new name to punk rock because, “after 1980 or so punk went underground” (Romano), and when Dookie emerged, it had more of a catchy sound to it. This caused some debate, but it ended quickly. People believe that Dookie helped set how music sounded for the rest of the 90s, “Before Dookie, guitar rock meant grunge: heavy, monotonic, humorless, and bleak. After Dookie, it meant something different—something brighter and sharper; something more melodic and even more romantic” (Romano). This is also led to the reason why, in 1995, “Dookie won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and the band was nominated for nine MTV Video Music Awards including Video of the Year” (Wikipedia).

After a couple of more years of releasing albums, the band was not able to beat the success that Dookie had, until 2004. In 2004, Green Day released their seventh studio album, American Idiot which,
“[...] charted in 27 countries and peaked at number one in 19 of them, eventually selling 15 million copies worldwide” (Wikipedia), this album was considered their come back because not all of their fans thought they would still be around. And not only did the album do so well in sales, but it was also talked about a lot due to the political talk in the songs, “We wanted to start a discussion” (Armstrong),which they easily accomplished. And later there was a stage adaptation created for American Idiot, which, “expanded story of the original album, with new characters such as Will, Extraordinary Girl, and Favorite Son” (Wikipedia), which are actual character that are found in the songs on the album.

The second song with a strong political statement is ‘Holiday.’ This song was meant to be another hit against George Bush and other people part of the government. Once again, this song started a discussion, and Armstrong made sure to clarify that the song is, “not anti-American, it’s anti-war” (Wikipedia). And even though this song may not seem like it, it does have a stronger statement than ‘American Idiot.’. While ‘American Idiot’ was taking aim at Bush, ‘Holiday,’ “takes aim at American conservatism. Armstrong felt that Republican politicians were "strategic" in alienating one group of people—for example, the gay community—in order to buy the votes of another” (Wikipedia). Which, this is still relevant, especially with the political debates going on currently-specifically Donald Trump. When you listen to the song closely, the bridge has real twisted lyrics, which is because, “which Armstrong hoped to be as "twisted as possible," was designed as a "politician's worst nightmare”’ (Wikipedia).Which, again, was made to make a statement and to get people’s attention.

This album was what brought people’s attention to how people in the media portray events that are happening, like the war in Iraq and the Bush re-election. It also allowed the band to state their own opinion, even though it meant people would criticize them because of it. Green Day hoped that American Idiot would impact the 2008 elections, “I made [American Idiot] to give people a reason to think for themselves. [...] Maybe that’s one reason why it’s difficult for me to write about politics now. A lot of things on that record are still relevant” (Armstrong). They also wanted to make known that there needs to be a change in how to deal with the problems America is facing, Armstrong says, “It's like we have this monarchy in politics – the passing of the baton between the Clintons and the Bushes. That's frightening. What needs to happen is a complete change, a person coming from the outside with a new perspective on all the f**ked-up problems we have.”

In the past 21 years, Green Day has managed to change the way people view punk rock with their album Dookie. And they helped shaped how the way punk rock music changed in the late 90s. They also managed to change the way people view politics and the media with American Idiot. With their newer, more popular album, 21st Century Breakdown, they were able to make a different cultural difference than American Idiot because it talked more about personal struggles. They still have many more years to go and topics to write about. Especially if Donald Trump wins the presidential election, then, we can probably expect another album in 2017. But, as it was said before, the songs on American Idiot are still relevant today, 11 years after the album was released. Which is a sign that we as people need to learn not to be afraid to speak out about our own opinions on politics and the media.We need to learn to think for ourselves, and not just follow whatever is popular in the media. And sometimes we need to be able to distinguish what is really happening in the world and not just what the media wants us to see. This happens a lot today specifically when talking about wars. All we hear mainly about is what is happening when someone attacks us and the aftermath, but when we attack someone else we forget about innocent people that could have lost their lives because of it. We need to stop listening to media that is just ignorant. We need to learn when the media takes things much further than they should.

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