Word: punkness
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...singer-guitarist, Billie Joe Armstrong, once proclaimed in song, "I'm a smart-ass, but I'm playing dumb," and for many years his performance was seamless. Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tre Cool met in their late teens and displayed natural gifts for propulsive, funny, disposable punk-pop songs about masturbation and alienation. In 1994 Dookie, their first major-label album, sold 10 million copies. Multimillionaires at 22, the members of Green Day settled into a routine of churning out blink-and-they're-over records followed closely by triumphant world tours. They were not quite criminally lucky...
...which Armstrong and Cool liked so much that they wrote their own 30-sec. additions. Soon they had the beginnings of the 9-min., five-part Jesus of Suburbia, which introduced both Jesus, a character struggling against the country's "red-neck agenda," and the possibility of a full punk-rock opera. "At first, we wondered if we should even call it something like that," says Armstrong, "but, hell, why not make it as grand as possible...
...particular embraced the challenge. As a kid, he sang show tunes at convalescent homes and veterans' hospitals, and he used the operatic concept as a chance to "figure out if I could take something like If My Friends Could See Me Now or Satin Doll and make it punk rock. I used everything I've ever learned or liked in music," he says. It shows. A significant part of American Idiot's charm is that for an album that bemoans the state of the union, it is irresistibly buoyant. Listen closely, and you will hear a story about Jesus...
...lyrics are the reason American Idiot is the most fully realized piece of Pop art to emerge from the 2004 political campaigns. Armstrong is a punk-rock millionaire from Northern California, and his party affiliation isn't tough to guess. But while most would-be artistic commentators droned on about candidates and policies, Armstrong dramatized his protest. A verse like...
...President Bush is undoubtedly the newsmaker of the year. Is he, however, a "revolutionary"? In your article, the Bush who no longer needs to win an election came across as a pugnacious thug, his swaggering, loves-to-be-hated style more brash than visionary. TIME said he was a "punk at heart" and recalled his college days of wearing cowboy boots and a bomber jacket on campus during Vietnam War protests. Was he an outsider then, as you suggest, or was he then?and is he now?the ultimate insider, a protected son of wealth and power who has little...