When I Come Around American Idiot Bang Bang Last Night On Earth Green Day

When I Come Around Album: Dookie (1994)
American Idiot Album: American Idiot (2004)
Bang Bang Album: Revolution Radio (2016)
Last Night On Earth Album: 21st Century Breakdown (2009)
by Green Day

A track from Green Day's first major-label album, "When I Come Around" is a very personal song lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong wrote about being away from his girlfriend, Adrienne Nesser, and the frustrations they both felt when he was on the road. Billie Joe met Adrienne in 1990 when Green Day performed in Minnesota, where she lived. He was just 18, and found it difficult to maintain a long distance relationship, especially with his touring schedule. In this song, he affirms his devotion for her, assuring her that when he does get to see her (when he "comes around") he will make it up to her.

Billie Joe and Adrienne got married in July 1994, a few months after Dookie was released and right in the midst of the band's rapid ascent to stardom (the band was touring at the time). The marriage endured, and couple had two children together.

MTV aired two different videos for When I Come Around. A concept video for the song was directed by Mark Kohr, and MTV also showed a live version from Green Day's infamous Woodstock '94 performance (lots of mud was in the air). They used this video to promote the MTV Woodstock '94 retrospective video tape.

Jason White, who sometimes played as a second guitarist for Green Day, is in this video. He's the guy kissing the girl.
When performing this song at Woodstock '94, a fan threw a clump of mud onstage and Billie Joe stuck it in his mouth. This caused the fans to keep throwing mud and started the infamous mud fight. A security guard (in a rush to get fans off of the stage) accidentally slammed bassist Mike Dirnt into an amplifier, causing him injuries to his arm and three of his teeth.
This song was not released as a single, which was a strategic move by Green Day's label (Reprise) to goose sales of the album. Airplay pushed the song to #6 in America.

The Woodstock '94 version of When I Come Around is included on the festival's live album, Woodstock 1994.

American Idiot refers to the state of the United States at that point in time. It speaks of a nation controlled by the new, biased media, and how the singer is not part of a "Redneck Agenda" discontent with how things are going. It was released during the 2004 presidential campaign, where George W. Bush was re-elected.

Green Day performed American Idiot at the 2005 Grammy awards, where the album won for Best Rock Album. It was also nominated for Album of the Year, but lost to Ray Charles' posthumously released album, Genius Loves Company.

The title track of American Idiot was nominated for Record of the Year, Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, Best Rock Song, and Best Music Video Short Form, but didn't take home any of the prizes.

Weird Al Yankovic parodied this song as "Canadian Idiot" on his 2006 album, Straight Outta Lynwood.
On the Nickelodeon TV show All That, they make fun of the TV show American Idol with a sketch called American Idiot.
This is one of three Green Day songs that is also the name of the album it comes from. The others are "Warning" and "Revolution Radio."

Samuel Bayer, who did the famous Blind Melon video for "No Rain" (the one with the bee girl), directed the "American Idiot" video. He did a few other Green Day videos as well, including "Wake Me Up When September Ends" and "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams."

Billie Joe Armstrong told Spin magazine in November 2004 regarding the American Idiot album: "It's about the confusion of where we're at right now. My education was punk rock - what the Dead Kennedys said, what Operation Ivy said. It was attacking America, but it was American at the same time."

When asked by an VH1 Storytellers' audience member if anyone who voted for George W. Bush was an "American Idiot," Billie Joe Armstrong replied: "No, just a misinformed idiot."

The band's longtime producer Rob Cavallo wasn't certain they could pull off the American Idiot album. He told MTV: "The truth is, when they started making American Idiot, they were each living their own separate lives, and no one was really sure how the chemistry was going to be, They all had to deal with a lot of personal stuff before they could be great again. And when they first came to me and said, 'Let's get the band back together and make the best rock record we can,' I wasn't totally sure they could do it."

Once they got in the studio, Cavallo was impressed with the band's dedication to the project. He continued: "They had all made a commitment, and I was lucky enough to be there at the beginning of that commitment. I'd go up there on a Monday and leave on a Friday, and we'd be in the studio 12 hours a day writing and conceptualizing. They were so focused and so invigorated that honestly, my main role was to be their coach, telling them that I believed in them. They did the rest."
Green Day had to start the album over from scratch after the masters for around 20 songs were stolen from the studio. "We had completely finished these songs, and we were getting ready to mix them," Billie Joe Armstrong explained to MTV. "We walked out of the studio and came back the next day, and all of the masters had been stolen … but [American Idiot] was about making mistakes and fixing them."

With the help of theater director Michael Mayer, the band adapted the American Idiot concept into a one-act stage musical. The rock opera, which follows the story of three troubled youths living miserably in suburbia, debuted at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and moved to Broadway the following year.

In 2006, grocery clerk Paul McPike sued Green Day, alleging that he'd written "American Idiot" and the other songs on their album way back in 1992. McPike's evidence consisted entirely of a copy of the album and a claim that the lyrics sung on the album didn't match those in the sleeve notes. The US District Court Judge suggested he could file a more detailed copyright infringement complaint in the future.

The 2007 Simpsons Movie boasted an "American Idiot: Funeral Version" played on an organ after the band's fictional drowning in Lake Springfield during a performance on a barge.

In July 2018 a Facebook campaign was set up to get the song to the top of the UK charts in protest against President Donald Trump's visit to the country. At first, it looked like the track might break into the Top 10, but it finished the week of his UK visit at #25.

American Idiot came top of a list compiled by South China University Of Technology of the most dangerous songs to listen to in the car. According to their research, listening to higher tempo tunes is more likely to make you drive faster and risk dangerous maneuvers. Songs with more than 120 beats per minute (BPM) have the most negative impact, and "American Idiot," with a BPM of 189, came top of their tally. It was followed by Miley Cyrus' "Party in the U.S.A." and The Killers' "Mr. Brightside. Led Zeppelin's " Stairway To Heaven" was considered the least dangerous.

Bang Bang was released as the lead single from Revolution Radio, a collection of tracks about the chaotic state of America in 2016. It was the first song to get the ball rolling. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong told Rolling Stone that he first demoed the tune in 2014: "I moved into a new studio that I built in Oakland and I just started messing around with different riffs," he recalled. "The first song where I was like, 'OK, I'm onto something,' was 'Bang Bang.' And then the first track of the record, 'Somewhere Now.' I started doing demos and I showed them to Mike and Tre. That's the test. And they absolutely loved it."

Bang Bang is written from the perspective of a potential mass shooter. Armstrong explained: "It's about the culture of mass shooting that happens in America mixed with narcissistic social media. There's this sort of rage happening, but it's also now being filmed and we all have ourselves under surveillance. To me, that is so twisted. To get into the brain of someone like that was freaky. It freaked me out. After I wrote it, all I wanted to do was get that out of my brain because it just freaked me out."

Rather than trying to get into the mass shooter's head and understand his crazy rationale, Armstrong was just trying to figure out his character. He said: "I don't know why someone would ever do something that horrific because I know I never would. It's just sort of meant to also reflect the culture a little bit without sounding pretentious."

Armstrong told Q magazine that he was surprised at how aggressive the song sounded. He said: "'Bang Bang' is the most aggressive single we've ever had. I didn't plan on it being that way. I don't want to be the old guy saying 'We're going to show these young whippersnappers how it's done.' It was just 'F--k, this sounds really good.'"

Discussing the song with Q magazine, Billie Joe Armstrong said: "There are so many mass shootings we're desensitized. There was a kid in Santa Barbara, who went on a killing spree, a couple of years ago, and he did these blogs like a manifesto, beforehand. He was suffering from his own insecurity and mental illness. The song's written in the first person, where I tried to put myself in his place."

Singer Billie Joe Armstrong explained to Q magazine May 2009 that "'Christian's Inferno' is like a subway ride to hell and you kind of end up in outer space with this" song. Bassist Mike Dirnt added: "It's the most unapologetic love song."

Last Night On Earth is a piano-led number. Armstrong learned the piano before recording 21st Century Breakdown and a lot of the songs were written on it. Bassist Mike Dimt told The Sun April 24, 2009: "There are parts of this record, which are the most melodic thing we've ever written." Armstrong added: "The piano was a new thing for us and I pushed my voice to do things it's never done before. I always hear a guitar symphony in my head all the time. How do you make song arrangements and push them further than they've ever gone before in the rock genre but still have it feel like you just heard a Ramones song? That's why Butch (Vig, producer) worked so well. He helped figure it all out. He's always been on our shortlist, since Nirvana's recording came out. But it was tough. You just have to keep ignoring the voices in your mind, telling you that you suck."

Armstrong told Billboard magazine that Last Night On Earth "is a love song I wrote for my wife. I wrote it on piano and then sang it. It's one of those things where it's only directed toward one person, like an intimate moment. And you say, 'Wow, I never sang falsetto before, that's pretty cool.'"