Over the weekend, Green Day made headlines for their New Year’s Eve performance of “American Idiot,” where they changed a lyric to call out Trump. Instead of “I’m not a part of the redneck agenda” of the original, Billie Joe Armstrong sang, “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.”
Since then, a video went around online of Fox Business hosts discussing the performance. “People are so sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands,” they said. “Stick to what you’re good at. You’re not a political analyst. You’re probably not really well read on the issues that Americans really care about.”
However, this didn’t sit right with Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello, who had some thoughts about the video. “Is that so?” he tweeted, regarding the fact that rock bands usually do call out political issues. (Case in point, his own.)
As other Green Day fans have pointed out, Armstrong has also been making this lyric change for quite a while. It just hadn’t been on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, but that was likely to still happen when they were hired for the gig.
Back in 2016, the band also yelled “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA” during the American Music Awards. And most recently, they sold merch with Trump’s mugshot on it, with the proceeds going to charity.
Check out Morello’s response about the Green Day criticism below.
Is that so? https://t.co/S41zMFqpGn
— Tom Morello (@tmorello) January 2, 2024
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.