Green Day Released A New Video About Trump, And I’m Not Sure How They Feel?

Since Donald Trump was elected, many musicians, writers and critics have spoken about a “punk protest renaissance”. Will music be better under a Trump presidency? Will it have more political urgency? Does this topic warrant as much attention as it’s currently attracting at a time when millions (usually not those writing the thinkpieces) could potentially be disenfranchised and placed in dangerous circumstance?

If you ask me, the answers are: who knows, maybe, and nah. As Jessica Hopper noted late last year the corollaries between political struggle and ‘great art’ are not as clear as critics often make out. “People have been singing their struggle since the dawn of recorded music in America; we just chose not to listen, or got tangled up in some bullshit hand-wringing over whose music was ‘real’, whose experiences we were willing to take in.”

“It’s clear that we are about to enter a time where music will only provide so much cover. We’re going to need a tighter connection, and we’re going to need to get real.”

this via @Elmo_Keep pic.twitter.com/3It3DVZbXc

— A.H. Cayley (@ahcayley) January 15, 2017

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at this!

Green Day has just realised a lyric video to their new song ‘Troubled Times’. The clip was posted overnight in the US to coincide with Martin Luther King Day (and comes just a few days before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration). Announcing it on Twitter, the band wrote “today we celebrate Love and Compassion more than ever”.

It’s every bit as political as that sounds.

This is obviously not a new move for the band. Green Day are renowned for their political protest songs, most notably through 2004’s American Idiot. The album was a response to both the presidency of George Bush and the Iraq war, among other political and cultural gripes. It went on to become a Broadway production, inspire a forthcoming HBO movie, and arguably contribute to a whole new wave of teens getting interested in US politics (my dorky 13-year-old self included).

Green Day has also made their opposition to the current president-elect clear throughout the last year. At the American Music Awards, the band chanted “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA!” on stage during their dong ‘Bang Bang’ and they subbed in some similar Trump lyrics into ‘American Idiot’ while performing at the MTV Europe Music Awards.

This is a good thing! The band are using their privilege and position (remember they’re still three rich, older, white dudes) to fuel opposition to politics they disagree with. Maybe a whole new group of 13-year-olds will take inspiration from it.

But does that make it good music? I dunno. Critics still consistently pick Dookie over American Idiot and that’s an album so straight-forward it’s named after poop.