Green Day pulls its political punches in Super Bowl performance
By Kyle Feldscher, Alli Rosenbloom, Maureen Chowdhury, CNN
Santa Clara, California (CNN) — The 1994 version of Billie Joe Armstrong would never.
On Sunday, Green Day opened up Super Bowl LX at Levi Stadium with a performance of several songs — but missing were the most political lyrics from some of the tracks.
The band started off with a nod toward nostalgic earworm “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” before launching into “Holiday,” one of the most political songs in the band’s repertoire. The first two verses of the song were sung with the usual lyrics, but when the band approached the controversial bridge of the song — which begins with the line “Sieg Heil to the President Gasman,” a dig at former President George W. Bush, who was president when the song was released in 2004 — the band just skipped it and wrapped up the song.
They later launched into “American Idiot,” the title track of the same album on which “Holiday” featured. In recent years during live performances, Armstrong has changed part of the opening lyrics to the second verse to “I’m not part of a MAGA agenda.”
But this time, the band went into an instrumental portion and guitar solo after finishing the first chorus and omitted that verse of the song completely. Former Super Bowl MVPs joined the band on stage and stood as Armstrong and his band finished up their set. They also sang “Boulevard of Broken Dreams from the “American Idiot” album.
It’s a long way from their performance on Friday at a Spotify and Fanduel event in San Francisco, when Armstong encouraged Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to “quit their sh***y jobs” and belted out all those political lyrics that were missing during Sunday’s performance.
Other than the fact that these songs, with the exception of “Good Riddance,” are from their most politically-charged album, 2004’s “American Idiot,” the performance made much less of a statement than many had anticipated.
The release of “American Idiot” was a roar of anger at Bush’s America and, at the time, cemented the band as one of the leading political voices in popular music at the time.
As time has gone by and politics in America have evolved, Armstrong, drummer Tre Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt haven’t mellowed. The band have regularly criticized the Trump administration while on their recent Saviors Tour before their Super Bowl performance.
The legendary punk rock band formed in California’s East Bay and was a seminal part of the early 1990s Bay Area music scene before going on to massive mainstream success. They have released 14 studio albums since the early ’90s, with their most recent offering, “Saviors,” released in 2024.
“Saviors” was a return to Green Day’s politically-leaning ethos, something Armstrong said they intentionally waited to do.
He told 102.1 the Edge that with “political songs, it takes a lot of heart to do that, and I think if you keep doing it for the sake of doing it just because you’re angry, then you take the heart out of it. Then it just becomes part of what everyone is complaining about.”
This time, he continued, with “Saviors,” “we brought it out, and we felt like it was the perfect time for it.”
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